Artificial Insemination in Mares

The time of year has arrived again when our thoughts turn to breeding.  Now that our clinic is fully operational we are delighted to be able to offer artificial insemination with chilled or frozen semen for your mare. 

Pregnancy rates with chilled semen are close to those obtained by natural service (roughly 60% per cycle) but are inherently lower with frozen semen. Most mares are suitable for chilled semen AI but frozen semen is generally only used in young fertile mares.  Please feel free to discuss the suitability of your mare with us.  The obvious advantage of frozen semen is that stallions from almost anywhere in the world can be used, whereas chilled semen must be delivered within 24 hours of collection, restricting its use to mainly UK stallions. 

AI has many advantages of natural service but is labour intensive so unfortunately not a cheap alternative!  The costs are higher due to the necessity for a greater number of examinations per cycle, more hormonal manipulations and the cost of collection, processing and transportation of semen.

Mares to be inseminated with frozen semen must be resident at the clinic, usually for a number of days, to allow scanning to take place several times daily in order to achieve maximum pregnancy rates.  It is also recommended that mares for chilled semen AI are brought into the clinic but this can be done at your premises in certain situations, when the usual visit and examination fees will apply.

For further information see Practices Experienced in the Use of Frozen & Chilled Semen