Mare Services - Embryo Transfer (ET)

Equistar Veterinary Services

Mare Services - Embryo Transfer (ET)

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Embryo Transfer is the transfer of a mares embryo into a recipient (surrogate) mares uterus. The recipient then carries the fetus as a regular pregnancy. This allows 'show' mares to continue to compete while producing offspring, allows for mares to produce multiple offpsring per year and allows some mares that have fertility problems to continue producing offspring.

Costs:
This specialized procedure costs around $4000 plus mare care for the donor mare and does not include the cost of shipping the semen, stud fees or any other stallion related fees. This does include the cost of the recipient that is pregnant with your mares foal. The recipient is sold to the mare owner once she is confirmed 40 days pregnant and a viable pregnancy is present. Equistar will purchase back the recipient once she has raised the foal.

Breakdown of fee's:
ET Deposit = $1500 for fresh, cooled semen (for this fee we will breed your mare and flush her up to 3 times). If no viable embryo is recovered after 3 attempts this deposit plus mare care is your only cost. This deposit is non-refundable once paid. For frozen semen the deposit is $1800.

Once we have recovered an embryo and placed it in a recipient and we confirm her to be 40 days pregnant with a viable pregnancy the balance of the ET is due ($2000) and at that time the recipient is sold to the donor mare owner for $500.

Every attempt is made to find suitable recipients that are of appropriate size and with good temperments. If the owner insists of trying to supply a specific recipient for a specific donor mare there is a $400 fee to synchronize the owners recipient mare. If the owners recipient can not be synchronized with a particular donor mare and Equistar has a recipient that is better synchronized the owner will be asked to make a substitution.

The procedure: Embryo transfer (ET) involves breeding the donor mare (your mare) as per a regular heat cycle (fresh or frozen semen) then 8 days later flushing her uterus with a specialized solution. The solution is filtered through a fine mesh filter so the tiny embryo can be isolated and then transfered into a recipient (surrogate) mare. Both mares have to have known ovulation dates and be synchronized within 2 days of ovulation from one another. Ideally we want the donor mare to ovulate 1 – 2 days BEFORE the recipient mare.

Equistar Veterinary Services maintains a herd of recipient horses with known ovulation dates. This way we will have a suitable mare to transfer an embryo into when required or you can provide us with a potential recipient for us to try and synchronize with your mare.