The commissioner of this thesis was Finnish Trotting and Breeding Association Suomen Hippos. The purpose of the thesis was to survey the current state of the trotting horse breeding and future its prospects in Finland. The material was collected with a questionnaire survey. A thesis on the same subject was made in HAMK University of Applied Sciences in 2009, but changes over the past five years required updating the work.

The data was collected with an online survey. The survey link was sent by Hippos to the trotting horse breeders, who had bred a foal in the past five years. The survey covered only the warm-blooded and Finnish horse foals. The survey was open in May 2015 for two weeks. The survey was answered by a total of 369 horse breeders.

Of the respondents to the survey, about two-thirds were women. Most of the respondents said they were 40 - 59 years old. Of the respondents 12 % were over 60 years old. About half of the breeders said that they intend to discontinue the operations during the next five years. The most common reasons for discontinuation were the low profitability of the work, the high cost in relation to income, old horses and the breeder’s own aging.

The results show that the level of trotting horse breeding should be increased in some ways, so that it becomes a little more profitable. Costs and income should get a better balance, for example, reducing costs or increasing cash prizes. Currently trotting horse breeding gave the most of the breeders only loss.