I've always been fascinated by the reproductive side of animal care and management. As a high schooler at 'cow camp' I was thrilled to have the chance to spend extra time with the presenters who came to demonstrate embryo transfer for us and my dad very graciously spent several evenings driving me to a class to learn how to do artificial insemination on my own animals. In college, I had the chance to spend time working on a research project tracking follicle growth on dairy cattle. So when we made the transition from cattle to horses I brought a solid foundation of knowledge about the reproductive process and a strong desire to learn and do as much as possible myself.
As it turns out, cattle and horses are very different in some important ways when it comes to breeding. Broadly speaking, cattle ovulate a set period of time after they come into heat, leading to the ability to predict with a fair bit of accuracy when is the best time to breed them, while horses ovulate a somewhat-set period of time before going OUT of heat, leading to the need for either a lot of repeated breedings or ultrasounding to see how the follicles on the ovary are growing and maturing in order to time the breeding correctly. When I bred my first mare, I had the vet out to do the ultrasounds, tell me when to breed, and confirm pregnancy. As our herd grew it quickly became apparent that repeated vet visits for breeding work were going to become cost prohibitive, as well as a scheduling nightmare given that I was working full-time at the time, and we needed to explore other options.
I found an ultrasound class through The Breeder's Assistant where we had the chance to do hands on practice and also classroom learning and in 2018 I purchased my first ultrasound and began tracking and managing my own mares. Now it's one thing to ultrasound a mare through a normal cycle, but the real challenges come in when things don't go as planned... which is more often than we like! As I grew in my ability to 'see' what was happening it also led to developing other skills such as doing uterine lavage to clear fluids, infusions to treat bacterial infections, on-farm AI and hormonal control of the estrus cycle. I love to read up on strange cases and have found a variety of helpful Facebook groups for discussion on reproductive management as well as textbooks full of good information, all of which has to be put to use practically to stick!
Our foray into the stallion side of breeding management came when our Brabant stallion, Ash, proved to be a very difficult stallion to collect for AI. After hauling him to multiple facilities only to have them give up on trying to collect him and then following up at a vet school where he was pronounced 'physically fit' but difficult we decided that it was another case of needing to do it ourselves. I travelled to Texas for a stallion oriented class with The Breeder's Assistant and came home to start amassing the equipment necessary for stallion collection and semen processing. Having done a lot of work on the female side of things with the cattle the switch to the male side of the equation was a big leap into the unknown. It has taken several years and a LOT of trial and error to get to the point where we can (mostly) collect Ash and are expanding to some of our other stallions as well. Unfortunately, with his challenges it is becoming clear that we are unlikely to be able to ship semen on Ash but the ability to do on-farm AI is a step in the right direction and so far he has done an excellent job of settling our mares this way and putting amazing foals on the ground. With the purchase of Boone earlier this year we finally have a stallion who is easy to collect and has excellent fertility so we have started slow working on shipping semen to outside mares.
Day to day, breeding management at AKH means keeping a ton of lists to stay on top of who needs to be checked (and why), when we plan to breed, stallion semen numbers, and any treatments that we're performing. It's a job I enjoy but requires all of my ability to organize, brainstorm, and focus to keep on top of the different needs of each horse. I believe that our hard work is paying off as our conception and foaling rates have improved drastically since we started taking control of the process ourselves. There are plenty of other areas of equine breeding and reproduction that we hope to explore in the future but for now we continue to plug away at managing our mares, working with our tricky stallions, and growing our ability to serve our customers through our knowledge and services.
