Om El Arab International

Go to any Arabian horse breeding country in the world today and ask any well established breeder to name the most influential privately owned Arabian breeding farm anywhere and with rare exception the breeder will name: Om El Arab.  Go to nearly any Arabian national show on any continent and you will usually find at least one champion that carries the blood of Om El Arab.  For example, this past year in Paris, the 1998 World Champion Junior Male was Espano Estopa, with both sire and dam bred at Om El Arab International, while the World Reserve champion Junior Female was ZT Shak Jamara, by *El Shaklan.  Go to each nation’s best, privately owned breeding farm and you will likely find *Estopa blood.  Now, even the Polish studs can boast *Estopa blood via her grandson *Sanadik El Shaklan.

Left : Sigi Constanti on the right, visits with Isabella Zawadzka of Poland
Right: Jay Constanti and "Sanadik El Shaklan."

Om El Arab International is a full-service breeding and training facility located on sixty-one acres nestled at the base of the San Rafael Mountains in the picturesque Santa Ynez Valley of California.  The architecture of the main barn is Spanish, and the European style is also seen in the airy and horse-friendly open-fronted  stalls. Owners, Jay and Sigi Constanti maintain about 85 Arabians, of which about 35 are managed for clients, many of whom live abroad.  Three major stallions reside on the farm, *Sanadik El Shaklan, *Sharem El Sheikh, and Estopasan.  The stallion *CG Balih El Jamaal, recently joined the stable from Brazil.  Throughout breeding season these stallions will be collected and shipped via chilled semen across the country and with frozen semen around the world. The farm will foal about twenty mares this year and some of those will eventually be exported to breeders around the world. Om El Arab International is a magnet for breeders – Jay and Sigi estimate 1000 visitors are drawn here; some to buy breedings, show and breeding stock, but many come simply for the opportunity to learn from and appreciate a unique multi-generational program.

Om El Arab's Head Sire *Sanadik El Shaklan (*El Shaklan X *Mohena).

Is there a reason for such success?   There is a measure of magic and some luck, certainly.  But, as with most successful endeavors, the results come from 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.  Like the owners of so many great breeding establishments around the world, Sigi and Jay Constanti, are horsemen first and foremost.  But of nearly equal importance, Jay and Sigi believe that breeders must become astute businessmen as well as being accomplished horsemen.   With the high costs of doing business, and the competitive nature of today’s horse industry, breeders must become masters of many tools of this age of technology.  Today’s competitive breeders must become as familiar with a computer or cell phone as they are with their horses.

From the outside, life on a breeding farm does look enchanting.  However, behind the bucolic charm of an Arabian horse farm in an elegant setting, with mares and foals munching contently in green pastures, there is an enormous amount of work. “The hours required to maintain a breeding farm and a competitive breeding program are such that we consider our work as more a way of life, rather than a job,” state Jay and Sigi.   The variety of responsibilities from promotion to embryo transfers often requires seven-day work weeks and often long days.  “To our knowledge,” state Jay and Sigi, “we are one of the very few large breeding establishments in the world who derive our sole income exclusively from our horses.”  There is very little on the farm that Jay and Sigi, or their children, can’t do themselves.  To enable the farm to become more self-sufficient in the breeding department their daughter, Janina, who is also the farm manager and a UCSB graduate, attended the course in reproduction at CSU.  Their son, Ben, is in his fourth year at Cal Poly and is responsible for the farming operations and farm maintenance. 

Jay and Sigi were not born into families with farms and horses.  Sigi was born and raised in Germany and studied Economics at the Freie Universitaet.  Always enamored with Arabian horses, in the summer of 1969 and still a teenager, Sigi took the Marbach State Stud course in horse husbandry and dressage.  In 1970, through her friendship with Arabian horse author/historian Erica Schiele, Sigi was introduced to Dona Maria Paz, Secretary of Spain’s Arabian Horse Society, who in turn introduced Sigi to HRH Teresa de Laula de Bourbon, whose friendship with Sigi opened the gates to Spain’s elite breeding farms.  It was during that summer that Sigi discovered *Estopa and the two started a life-long bond.  After thirty years of breeding Sigi reflects, “My single greatest fortune in my life as a breeder was to have discovered *Estopa.”  In the fall of 1971, on a trip to Egypt, Sigi met the chestnut straight Egyptian stallion named Shaker.  Within a short time Shaker was at his new home in Germany with a new name “Shaker El Masri” meaning “Thankful to Egypt.”  In September of 1974 Sigi mated *Estopa with Shaker El Masri to create in August of 1975 a stallion who would become one of the world’s most influential stallions of the coming century - *El Shaklan.  Within a few years horses carrying *Estopa bloodlines captured nearly every major show title in Europe.  In 1983 Sigi decided to take up the challenge further west and sent horses to compete in the United States.  By 1984 the core of the Om El Arab breeding program was in California.

Half a world away, at the same time Sigi was riding at Marbach, a young man in California was deciding to change the direction his life had been set since childhood.  Born in a suburb of San Francisco into a family of journalists, writers and teachers, Jay Constanti’s course had been set at an early age in the direction of literature and teaching.  In college Jay switched schools in favor of a degree in Animal Science and a life with horses.  “I was one of those college kids who was consumed with learning all I could about horses.  While in school I won my first national championship in distance riding, managed a dressage/hunter-jumper facility and organized the first annual NATRC competitive trail ride on the campus.”  With his eye towards veterinary school, Jay spent the two years following Cal Poly working as an assistant at a large animal vet clinic.  Jay recalls, “The knowledge that I gained during those two years was essential to rounding out my knowledge of horse management.”   

 By 1987 Jay and Sigi had fallen in love and were married, and “Om El Arab International” was born.      The success of the Om El Arab bred horses in Europe was legend but Jay and Sigi’s dream was to bring the influence of the Om El Arab breeding program to a new dimension of prominence around the world.  “The Om El Arab breeding program was thought of as a “European” breeding program,” states Jay.  “Our goal was to bring our horses into prominence in the American show scene, re-establish our influence in Europe, as well as into new countries that hadn’t yet discovered *Estopa bloodlines.”