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An embryo from one mare - the donor
- is placed into another mare - the
recipient - which has been suitably
synchronised. This enables the foal
to be born by surrogacy. The foal's
genetics are derived from the donor
mare and the stallion and not the
recipient which merely takes the foal
through to weaning.
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HOW IS EMBRYO TRANSFER DONE?
Your
mare is inseminated with fresh, chilled or
frozen semen of your choice around the time
of ovulation to create an embryo. About 8
days later this embryo is non-surgically flushed
out of the donor uterus and placed into a
suitable recipient mare, which carries the
pregnancy to full term. This allows your mare
to continue with competing and/or further
reproductive cycles. In fact your mare can
compete throughout every stage of embryo transfer
providing geography allows!
RECIPIENT MARES
You
can produce your own recipient mare, if suitable,
or rent one from The Beaufort Embryo Transfer
Centre. Recipients should have a clean reproductive
history and are usually aged between 5 and
10 years. We do use maiden mares and although
the birth weights of their foals are often
lower, due to their milk producing abilities
the foals have generally caught up by weaning.
Recipients come in all shapes and sizes, the
more common the better! Native mares are hardier,
more fertile, produce better milk and generally
make the best mothers. It is important that
your donor and recipient are a similar height,
although breadth does make up for a small
amount of height! We often re-home suitable
mares as recipients whose career has been
cut short for any reason, most commonly lameness.
SUCCESS RATES
Our
current embryo recovery rate is 74.9% and
our pregnancy rate 14 days post ovulation
is 70.5%. These figures are some of the highest
reported for non-surgical embryo transfer
in horses. One donor mare came to us for a
period of 5 weeks and underwent 2 flushings
which produced 4 embryos. 4 live foals resulted,
3 of which were from embryos obtained from
the same flushing, giving Britain the first
reported set of embryo transfer triplets!
WHAT DOES IT COST?
The cost
of one embryo from your mare, based on a 42
day pregnant recipient, is £1500 using
chilled semen. Subsequent embryos are £1000
each. With chilled semen we do not charge
on a per procedure basis to avoid hidden charges
building up for the client, especially in
unsuccessful cases. If, however you are using
frozen semen, the charges are on a per procedure
basis and are available on request. Extra
charges that you may incur are semen costs,
keep charges and recipient mare hire fees.
If
you have any questions, please contact Emma
Tomlinson, MRCVS on: 07831498948
E-mail: embryotransfer@beaufortpoloclub.co.uk
