Continued from page 12.. The Copper Crowne Concept By Barbara Newtown I don’t see shortcuts here! Everything is first class. Yes! Breeding and training done right, right here. And LACER has always had that same principle and same core values. Sunny and I see the world the same way. Even though LACER has focused on different breeds and disciplines—particularly running quarter horses—and Copper Crowne has focused on Thoroughbreds, we are open to everything. We moved the stallions to Copper Crowne and now use the nice, big stallion stalls at LACER as foaling stalls. They tie in well to the office where we have overnight staff. It all fits really well. God is a smart guy! He does a lot when we are not looking.
small time window post ovulation, no more than three or four hours, it’s actually very effective. Cattle breeders have been using frozen semen successfully much longer than horse breeders. In general, equine reproduction is very different. The chemicals used to make extenders for bull semen really don’t work that well on the equine sperm cell. Cattle embryos can be frozen. But with horses we have to use cryoprotectants that basically change the freeze point of the fluid inside the cell. The fluid doesn’t actually freeze but turns into a glass-like state. It’s called vitrification, not freezing.
What’s so wonderful about the union of LACER, Acadiana, and Copper Crowne is that it is so amiable. The only way to be first class is to have people who are really good at what they do. You have to be able to put together a team. You capitalize on everyone’s strengths. We do really high end reproductive work, which is very near and dear to me, but, for instance, we have the full complement of surgery, particularly emergency surgery. There is a very limited number of practices in the state that offer emergency surgeries. Now we are one of those practices, and especially in this region that’s a big deal. And I think the development of a rehab facility is a huge deal. I am somewhat familiar with the use of frozen semen in the warmblood breeds. It seems that breeders are having more success these days. In the last five to seven years, generally speaking, the quality of frozen equine semen has improved dramatically. When you use high quality frozen semen with really wellmanaged mares, I can’t say I see a significant decrease in fertility. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have said that. A lot of the extender we use to freeze the semen does a much better job of protecting the cells through the preservation process. Is it hard to time insemination when you use frozen? In the literature it is claimed that you can be anywhere from 12 hours pre-ovulation to 6 hours post-ovulation. However, in my experience if you are on the edges of that time frame you will have very little success. What is the time frame for fresh semen? With fresh we talk about a 48 hour window prior to ovulation, so getting mares pregnant with fresh semen is a lot easier. It’s a lot less time and a lot less work. We have products that can induce ovulation, somewhere between 36 and 48 hours after injection. When we use frozen, when it is 36 hours post injection we check that mare hourly and then we breed her within an hour post ovulation. If you know you are in that very
50
a history of being abnormal. Some older mares tend to ovulate smaller follicles and tend not to show signs of estrus nearly as long. We have a mare of a client and the biggest her follicle has ever grown is 17 or 18 millimeters. She commonly ovulates multiple, very small follicles. She was out of our care for a while, and the stud farm she was at refused to breed her on small follicles. They had her for three heat cycles and never bred her because she ovulated early each time. She came back to the farm I was working at and we settled her back. You have to listen to the individual. Will a foal carried by a recipient mare be the same quality as a foal carried by its real mother? Absolutely no genetic material is passed from the recipient mare to the foal. But you get to the question of nurture versus nature. I would suggest that “nurture” starts immediately after conception. The uterine environment of the donor is very different from the uterine environment of the recipient. Unfortunately our ability to assess [uterine environment] is limited. Still, if you look at Thoroughbred produce records, there is certainly a correlation between younger mares and better offspring. I have no numbers to back this up, but logic would certainly support the idea that you would do an embryo a favor by removing from the uterus of an older mare and allowing it to be carried in the healthier uterus of a younger mare. You mentioned that repro work is very seasonal.
Cattle embryos are also much smaller than horse embryos. We have to flush mares a bit early to collect smaller embryos. The chemicals are damaging to the cells. If you have too large an embryo, the chemicals will not penetrate the center of the embryo quickly enough before the chemicals start killing the cells on the periphery. How early in the pregnancy can you flush an embryo? Six days post ovulation. That can’t be seen on ultrasound, can it? Oh, no. The earliest you can consistently find vesicles in a mare’s uterus on an ultrasound is about day 11 or 12. Every time we do a flush on a donor mare we are hoping there’s an embryo in there. After we collect the fluid, filter it, and look at it, we are either happy or sad. Conception occurs in the oviduct of the mare. It’s not until day 5 that the embryo enters the uterus. You can’t effectively flush the oviduct with the techniques we commonly use. So we are trying to hit a time frame where the embryo enters the uterus on day 5, and if we wait past day 6 the embryo is too big to vitrify. There are certainly times when you flush the mare on day 6 and you don’t recover an embryo. If she turns up pregnant…well, the embryo was probably still in the oviduct. Not every mare reads the book! You have to assume a mare is normal, unless she has
Louisiana Equine Report • December 2015 | January 2016
Sure. Around May or June repro slows down substantially and I can help out with other areas of the practice. I do anesthesia sometimes for our surgeon, Dr. Pete Baia. Come January, I won’t be doing much anesthesia! Thank you, Dr. Cramer! For more information, contact: Acadiana Equine Hospital | 5124 Hwy 182 Opelousas, LA 70570 | (337) 407-9555 acadianaequinehospital@gmail.com www.acadianaequinehospital.com For more information about the services offered by the Copper Crowne Equestrian Center, contact: Copper Crowne Equestrian Center 5180 Hwy 182 South | Opelousas, LA 70570 8 (337) 942-2401 sales@coppercrowne.com • www.coppercrowne.com For more information about LACER, contact: Louisiana Center for Equine Reproduction 660 Montgomery Road | Opelousas, LA 70570 (337) 407-0708 • www.laequine.com