Denmark Victor is the product of a lifetime of breeding elite horses by Dennis Keys and his family. Dennis has always had a simple philosophy of breeding his good mares to the best sires of the time and now at age 82 he can be justifiably proud of the magnificent home bred sire, Denmark Victor.
The Denmark prefix was first registered in the late 1970’s. The DEN is for Dennis Keys, M for son Matthew, A is wife Anne, R and K for daughters Rachel and Kylie. So, the whole Keys family were involved in the operation.
Dennis originally came from a hacking background so his first priority has always been to breed horses for good conformation and eye appeal. As his interests progressed to campdrafting, athleticism and natural cattle sense also became paramount in his breeding program and he has used the best heritage stallions such as Master Luke, Warrenbri Romeo, Yarraman Stroller and Brown Victory to achieve these goals.
Denmark Victor’s dam is Denmark Coreena who is by Romeo. She is a beautiful mare but was only very lightly drafted by Matthew due to family work commitments She won the Maiden and 2nd in the Novice on her first outing and three further drafts in her short 18 month career.
Dennis was always on the lookout for the next good horse to breed Coreena to and after calling in to a draft at the Hunter he saw Ken MacCallum riding Brown Victory and decided instantly that he was the horse he was looking for.
Brown Victory, was a prolific winner in the campdraft arena with Ken MacCallum and Ken McCarthy as his usual riders. He won the ABCRA Open Horse of the Year and competed in the World Championship draft at the Sydney Royal.
Brown Victory is also siring very competitive campdraft horses and his pedigree shows the strong mare lines that competed so successfully for Ken Brown along with stallions including Abbey and Reality.
Victor was always a good looking foal with exceptional temperament and each time Dennis’ daughter, Kylie McPhee, returned to Boggabri to visit her parents she couldn’t help but notice how well he was developing and she offered to go halves with him. Thankfully for Kylie Dennis accepted and she took over Victor’s management with the initial understanding being if he didn’t measure up or was difficult to handle he would be gelded.
Kylie normally does the ground work on all their horses herself but in this instance she felt a stallion needed a firmer hand to do the breaking, so Victor was sent to Cody O’Neill.
Kylie then started him in the mustering team and everything has been positive ever since. He was also sent to Jack Breed who has given him steady feedlot work on occasions and Jack gave him his first couple of starts in drafts as a 4 and 5 year old.
Since then Kylie says, “I have been having an absolute ball carting him in my string”.
She lists he attributes as follows:
- An outstanding ASH type and a very eye catching animal.
- He has athleticism, speed and endurance and he is a fantastic horse to do a days work on.
- He has superior cattle sense and is extremely cowy.
- He has excellent temperament and is kind, quiet, smart, human loving and well mannered.
As a young sire, he has limited foals on the ground, but with an extremely busy 2022/23 breeding season that’s all about to change.
To date his foals are throwing his lovely long big front, lovely type and kind nature.
Victor has big future ahead as both competitor and Sire!
