BREEDING!!!!!

Sorry that it’s been so long since my last post to this blog but we have been so busy.
Let’s start with Tootsie who has been here since March 2nd. Tootsie came into heat in Early April. We watched her and we felt that her heat was a little to weak. Tootsie is one of the few mares we will live cover with the stallion and it is very important that she is in a strong heat otherwise she may not accept the stallion. Most of the mares we breed we do by AI (Artificial Insemination).
She came back into heat and we covered her twice, on April 25 and 27. She was out of heat on the 29th of April. Now you may be wondering why we covered the mare every other day. Semen will survive for forty eight hours inside the mare so there is no reason to live cover a mare more than every other day during her heat.
To prepare for breeding we wash both the stallion and the mare to make sure both are clean. The Penis and the Vigina both need to be dried and close attention needs to be made to make sure no water is present since water will kill the sperm. We wrap the mare’s tail with vet wrap so that hair does not get pushed into the vigina and the she is brought out to get ready to accept the stallion. The stallion may be brought to the mares stall several times so that he and the mare may be “teased” which gets them both ready for the breeding.
The stallion is lead to the mare, directed to her hip so that he can get a clean mount onto the mare and yet be some what out of the reach of her if she were to kick. Again, if a mare is in a good “standing heat” she will stand and accept the stallion.
Tootsie, even though we got two good covers on her, she came back into heat on May 9th and 11th we got two more good covers on her. She is due to come back into heat on May 30th so we have started to tease her so that we will know if and when she does. If she shows no sign of a heat by June 1st, we will call the vet to have an ultra sound done to confirm her to be “in foal” and bred.

Precious is a twenty year old mare who has some very nice old blood lines that we would like to cross with Desert Storm. She is also very well put together with great type, conformation and nice bone. She was bred on May 13 and 14 by AI and went right out of heat. We did find that her cervix did not open very wide and being an older mare we have some concerns about getting her in foal. Even if we do get her in foal, we will be very lucky if she does not abort. Being a twenty year old virgin along with some of the issues we founds upon breeding her, I will say that she is our long shot.
Precious is due to come back into heat on May 39th also.

Our third mare is named Jezzy and she came in on March second along with Tootsie however she came to us already in foal. Her due date was April 15 and we have her here so that we can breed her in her foal heat right after her foaling.
Most mares foal around 340 days however this mare went 369 days and foaled a very nice filly. We did have some problems however because the mare had very little milk to nurse her foal. After evaluating the foal and checking the mare for several hours we decided to call in a vet. After a transfusion of plasma to the foal and other goodies to get her strength up, we then gave the mare a shot of Oxytosin to make her drop her milk.
We started another oral medication to help the mare produce more milk. After one week the foal is doing fine, eating grain and the mare is producing enough milk to supply the foal.
At this time Jezzy is in her foal heat and we may attempt to breed her in the next day or two.

We will collect Storm and we will breed Jezzy by AI.

When we collect a stallion we start out by washing the stallion and make sure he is completely dry. We prepare the AV (Artificial vigina) by putting a liner which has a plastic bottle which has a filter in it, down the middle of the AV. The AV itself is a round plastic tube about four or five inches in diameter and twenty four inches long. It is lined with a rubber bladder and through a valve on the out side, it can be filled with the correct temperature water at the correct tightness for the stallion. Our AV fits inside of the phantom (the dummy mare the stallion mounts) so a person does not have to hold the AV while the stallion is mounted. It takes time to train the stallion but collecting a stallion is a lot safer than live cover for both animals and handlers.

Wish us luck as we wait for the results of two mares and we get ready to breed the third.