A friend of mine near Germany imports and trains Curly horses and often imports from the US. She is now looking at Canada and wondered where the safe, good value quarantine places are.

Prices in the US seem to have gone up quite a lot since the increase in oil prices, but as Canada overall seems better value, does that apply to import centres?

Have any of you imported from Canada? If so can you point her in the right direction?

I've just had a quote of CND $7,000 to import from Canada, door to door, including quarantine, but this doesn't include UK taxes etc. This quote was from Bob Thomson who works in conjuction with John Parker International, so must be good. They fly into Luxembourg and onward to the UK from there, with John Parker. Hope this helps.

I imported my quarter horse from Alberta in Canada. I used Bob Thompson and Parkers, and the quarantine care Bob and his wife gave my horse was wonderful - he arrived looking great. He was actually in quarantine for six weeks rather than the normal 4 because of a problem with another horse who was being shipped over at the same time, but they didn't charge me any more. They emailed me really regularly telling me how he was getting on.

It was a really stress free experience (within reason!). Parkers, as everyone knows are great at their job, and really looked after Luke. Bob I think imports and exports from the West side of Canada, although I know some people from Alberta had road hauled horses to the Eastern side and then they quarantined and flew from there - and they had good experiences too.

I was very impressed with the care that Luke had from both Bob Thompson and Parkers and would recommend them.

We imported two mares from Alberta last summer without any problems. They arrive in good condition and seemed fairly unstressed. The only minor point was that their feet were not in terribly good condition although the vetting didn't point this out. Could just be different standards. John Parker transport were great and handled things extremely well, helping us out when the VAT was much higher than it should have been due to an administrative mix up. Do make sure that the shipping invoice only shows what is paid for the horse, no other charges such as vetting, quarantine, etc!

Hi,

What are the typical rates of import duty +/- VAT that apply when importing horses from the USA?

Thanks in advance

Best person to ask would be John Parker at John Parker International who can explain it better but as far as I understand it you don't pay import duty on what is designated 'breeding stock' ie horses that are registered, with papers. You would therefore pay duty on a gelding, registered or not as they have no breeding value. You have to pay VAT on the value of the horse and declared value for freight.