Reproduction
We offer pre-breeding exams and treatments for mares & stallions.
Complete artificial insemination services include:
- Stallion collection & sperm evaluation
- Semen shipping to your mare owner
- Coordinating and receiving of semen deliveries for your mare
- In clinic and on farm inseminations.
We can develop post-breeding mare care plans for your mare's individualized needs. We also provide pregnancy detection, cultures, uterine treatments, pre and post-breeding hormone therapies.
Mare Breeding Services
Ridgefield Equine Clinic offers a full range of mare breeding services. The objectives of these services are to provide horse owners with the most current technology available for the reproductive management of their mares. The following provides a brief overview of the mare breeding services offered by Ridgefield Equine Clinic. For more complete details, please contact us.
Artificial Insemination (AI)
We provide mare breeding services using artificial insemination with cooled and frozen semen. Services are provided on an outpatient or inpatient basis. All services are charged on a per-procedure basis.
AI Recomendations
Ridgefield Equine Clinic recommends the mare have a breeding exam and uterine culture/cytology prior to breeding to ensure that the mare has no abnormalities or current uterine infections.
Requirements/Procedure
The mare needs to be in heat to obtain the uterine culture. In order to determine the optimal time of breeding, mares in heat are examined with transrectal palpation and ultrasonography as frequently as deemed necessary based on the method of breeding.
Mares being bred with artificial insemination using shippedcooled semen are generally examined daily while they are in heat to predict the day of ovulation. Mares being bred with frozen thawed semen may be examined several times in a day while they are in heat to ensure correct insemination timing.
After breeding, mares are examined for pregnancy 14-16 days after ovulation. It is important to have the mare checked at this time in case of twins so they can be managed.
Routine hormone treatments are administered as necessary to bring mares into heat (i.e., prostaglandin) and to hasten ovulation (i.e., human chorionic gonadotropin, hCG; or gonadotropin releasing hormone, deslorelin). In addition, uterine treatments (i.e., antibiotic therapy and/or uterine lavage) are performed as deemed necessary based on transrectal ultrasonography examinations (i.e., presence of free intrauterine fluid), or other diagnostic techniques (i.e., uterine cultures).
Frozen Semen Services
Ridgefield Equine Clinic provides a commercial equine semen freezing and storage service for domestic export. The object of this service is to provide horse owners and veterinarians with the latest research and technology available for preserving and storing equine semen. The following provides a brief overview of the equine semen freezing service provided by Ridgefield Equine Clinic. For more complete details, please contact us.
Semen Storage
Semen collection, evaluation, preservation (freezing) and long-term storage of frozen semen is performed at Ridgefield Equine Clinic. During the initial test freeze, a stallion will have a clean out collection, 2-3 additional collections every other day, an EVA test, and 2 post thaw evaluations. Boarding can be arranged for the stallion during this process.
The stallion’s semen is frozen using two different semen-freezing techniques with different extenders in order to determine the optimal method of freezing semen for each individual stallion. The number of straws per dose will vary with each stallion. Ridgefield Equine Clinic recommends a minimum post-thaw progressive motility of greater than 25-30% for commercial use.