She is finally in foal on the 5th attempt

[irishdraught]

My ID x TB mare was inseminated 4 times using frozen semen and although everything looked good, semen good, mare ovulated as expected etc, she remained empty.

A last ditch attempt using chilled semen (at the advice of the stallion owner) has worked and the vet has just left after carrying out her heartbeat scan!

This was going to be the last attempt of the year as I am sure there is only so much a mare can take. Typical of my mare I suppose, everything in her own time.

Many thanks to Julie of Weston Stud who offered the chilled semen as an alternative and our fantastic vets. May it offer hope to some mare owners that are a bit more difficult - it may be worth a change of plan to see what works. If all goes to plan, approximate due date 21st June 09.

 

[AndyPandy]

Great news. Had the frozen semen been proven previously? If she took first time with chilled, and your vets were doing a good job, it does point to there being a problem with the semen. Even if it looked motile, that is no guarantee of fertility.

Glad she's finally sorted

 

[irishdraught]

Vet assured me that there was not a problem with the semen, there are lots of frozen babies on the ground so I have no reason to doubt the fertility

Could it be possible that chilled works better than frozen on some mares? I don't know the technicalities that well to be able to say myself.

 

[AndyPandy]

Well, frozen semen is very irritating to the uterus, and mares often put up a lot of fluid and prolonged inflammation due to the high concentration of dead sperm cells. As a result, a good deal of mares need aggressive pharmacological intervention (oxytocin therapy, washouts, (sometimes antibiotics as a precaution) etc.). But if she didn't take, and didn't have any excessive "reaction" to being inseminated with frozen (or did but it was treated), and your vets are competent in the use of frozen semen, it would be strange for her not to take after 4 cycles. Possibly stallion-mare incompatibility, but that is quite rare.

Anyway, good news is that she's in foal!

 

[charliesarmy]

Congratulations.... my mare was considered incompatible with the stallion I was using tried all summer last year so I changed stallion and she got pregnant straight off unfortunatly it had gone at the heartbeat scan...was gonna use him again this year on NFFR terms but he's died

so had to use another stallion (she's putting it about abit hehehe) and bobs your uncle caught again straight away so defo think there was a incompatability issue with husband 1 or maybe its just IDxTB's being fussy madams

 

[maestro]

Really pleased it worked for you, relief all round I should think. Kind of you to give us a mention. Foals on the ground is always the aim so sometimes you have to change the plan.
JPs semen has always been very good frozen, Twemlows set a very high standad for a pass rate. Our first attempt at using it is now 4 years old and the mare took first time and was an 18year old maiden. We would not want to try and sell a product that we considered not so good. But as always the mares have the final say and this time the lady says YES!

 

[AndyPandy]

[ QUOTE ]
JPs semen has always been very good frozen, Twemlows set a very high standad for a pass rate. Our first attempt at using it is now 4 years old and the mare took first time and was an 18year old maiden. We would not want to try and sell a product that we considered not so good. But as always the mares have the final say and this time the lady says YES!

[/ QUOTE ]

Please accept my apologies if you thought I was suggesting you would be so unscrupulous as to sell unproven frozen semen - it was just an obvious question to ask. Perhaps there is an incompatibility issue here, or the this mare could have a particularly bad inflammatory response to frozen semen, or issues with the veterinary treatment - who knows it's very difficult to tell via posts on HHO!

One thing I will say, as always, is that no matter what laboratory tests are done by a freezing unit, no matter how good the semen "looks", the only proof of fertility is achieving pregnancies. If JP's frozen semen is producing pregnancies, then it's clearly fertile, and I hope you will use, or are already using the term "PROVEN frozen semen" in any of your marketing material

 

[maestro]

I thought you quite right to ask the question, I just thought it was worth clariying our findings. We certainly do try to promote our frozen semen particularly with its success abroad. But it is only as good as the vets and mares let it be and in this country it still gets bad press due to bad handling in some cases. The standards do need to be raised and maintained to help British Breeding to make use of the technology available.
It would be our idea of heaven just to send JP away a month a year for collection and then home. He would have competed a lot longer if we could have done that.!

 

[Three]

Congratulations!

We're on our fifth try this year (and I think Vloatis had one that took at no.5?) - scanning on 22nd.

I'm interested in the compatability issue though - is it common does anyone know? Just wondering if no.5 doesn't take if it's time to try a different stallion?

 

[maestro]

We had a mare into use with Rubin Royale tried three times without success but no obvious reason why it did not take, no fluid timing seemed v. good and semen looked v. good. Fourth time could not get hold of semen so popped in some JP and was in foal! But the eternal conundrum would be would she taken anyway or was she just not compatable. (Or is that just what you say when they dont take for what ever reason)
The only thing different, appart from the stallion was that the last time she threw up some fluid which we treated- was that what we somehow missed despite scanning so carefully after each season!
Incidently the mare is by Rousseau out of a Goodtimes mare so will be a very interesting mix, either brilliant or very confused how high or how fast shall I go!

 

[AndyPandy]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm interested in the compatability issue though - is it common does anyone know? Just wondering if no.5 doesn't take if it's time to try a different stallion?

[/ QUOTE ]

Basically, if a mare repeatedly (3-4 cycles) does not get in foal using semen from a fertile stallion under ideal conditions, then it is a possible issue. In these cases, the mare probably has antisperm antibodies for that particular stallion (just a random event during the development of the mare's immune system). If you then change the stallion and the mare gets in first time, then it's likely to be stallion/mare incompatibility.

However, it's really not that common... and often gets blamed where something else was actually going wrong with the breeding process.

I think some universities are working on a test for it, but nothing has come of that research yet as far as I am aware.