Barbaro Wonderings

Josh Dutzy · Post by **Josh Dutzy** » 17 years ago

The only issue of him going to stud is whether or not he is physically sound enough to put all of his wieght on his hind legs for the amount of time it takes him to mount and dismount a mare. Some stallions are in and out of the breeding shed in under a minute (Distorted Humor) and some take upwards of 20 minutes or so for just one mare (Hennessey). With a reconstructed right leg, and a laminitis stricken left foot it probably won;t be known for at LEAST a year whether he will be able to breed.

IsaP · Post by **IsaP** » 17 years ago

Well, one step at a time.. he gets stronger every day as does that leg. I think he'll be able to use it eventually.. he just has some hefty mountains to climb first.

Angela Dee Cochran · Post by **Angela Dee Cochran** » 17 years ago

Yeah I can see that it would be quite awhile before hed be able to put all his weight on it. Maybe they can make a brace for breeding time? Before- I was thinking that they could just do AI but I had forgoten that they arent allowed to do AI. oops. :rolleyes:

IsaP · Post by **IsaP** » 17 years ago

A mistake, I believe... but I've seen excellent results wth AI

Kateri Lennox · Post by **Kateri Lennox** » 17 years ago

If he can't manage live cover but can do AI, hopefully they'll allow him to breed for sporthorse purposes. I think he'd make some loverly show jumpers/eventers.

Martin Pennington · Post by **Martin Pennington** » 17 years ago

If he can't breed properly then he should be at a horse farm end of story.

The World Racing Authorities don't allow AI and never will do.

Angela Dee Cochran · Post by **Angela Dee Cochran** » 17 years ago

Just currious (because I dont know), why is it they wont allow AI?

Mandy Saunders · Post by **Mandy Saunders** » 17 years ago

Angela Dee Cochran wrote: Just currious (because I dont know), why is it they wont allow AI?

You know...I never knew why either. They just...never did and never will. Been many lawsuits and such with small breeders doing selective breeding to get a certain color or whatever in the past but they always loose. Horses who are produced through AI are just not allowed to be registered with the Jockey Club. I guess it has a lot to do with the uncertainty of it. What if the semen sent to you for your mare wasn't from the stallion you paid for? But you don't know, and your mare gives birth to a foal who is then registered and is bred to other horses and all of a sudden, you've got yourself a very effed up bloodline. Yeah, a lot of blackmail can go on with AI, very easy to do.

Kateri Lennox · Post by **Kateri Lennox** » 17 years ago

I'm not sure what the "official" reason is (since DNA testing works just as well on AI babies as on live cover), but real-world reasoning is that live cover limits the number of foals a stud can have in a year. Therefore, each foal is worth more money. Therefore, the racing industry gets/spends/circulates more money via stud fees, auctions, and so on.

Storm Cat's fee is $500,000 for 2007. Your average warmblood sire (via AI) is around $2,000, but for the sake of argument we'll assume that the top notch ones are $10,000. Storm Cat can cover ~150 mares in a season, which means $75,000,000 in stud fees.

AI stallions are usually collected 3 times a week, and each collection can produce 10 straws of semen...average of 2 straws per mare = 15 mares bred per week. If you figure a 6 month breeding season, that's 360 mares, or $3,600,000 stud fees for the sire.

[Apart from googling Storm Cat's stud fee, I'm making up numbers based on my memory of equine repro class, for the sake of argument. The numbers could be off, but the bottom line is $500,000 stud fee with few mares far outweighs $10,000 stud fee with way more mares.]

Ara Davies · Post by **Ara Davies** » 17 years ago

It's actually in the best interest of the big breeders to disallow AI. If Storm Cat (for example) started breeding lots of mares through AI, his stud fee could drastically lower and he'd still be bringing in just as much money (because he'd be breeding so many mares).

So under the current situation (no AI):
You have a mare. You have a choice of breeding to Storm Cat for $500,000 or to some other stallion who is still very nice for $75,000. Which are you going to pick?

Under an AI situation:
You have a mare. You have a choice of breeding to Storm Cat for $75,000 or to some other stallion for $75,000. Now which are you going to pick?

AI could force the lowering of stud fees across the board for all stallions, which would really hurt a lot of farms if they weren't standing the "big" horse. Even the bigger farms would be affected.

The rich breeders don't want to risk that so there's no way the Jockey Club is going to change their rules anytime soon.

Edit: In addition, regional stallions would be affected since mares in those states wouldn't have to ship to Kentucky to breed to one of the expensive stallions.

IsaP · Post by **IsaP** » 17 years ago

AI doesn't really allow a stud to service more mares. It also doesn't come with a live foal guarantee as does live cover.. one of the perks to paying the higher price. When we had to "collect", we couldn't do it every day.. or even every week. A stud needs time to produce a "quality" sample, be it AI or live cover. Personally, I think it's safer for both the stud and the mare (no being kicked or being slammed respectively), and it has many benefits other than just being cheeper. On the other hand, about 3 out of 10 AI attemps actually take. You rarely catch the foal heat on your first attempt, but hey.. less uterine infections, too.

I just know the plus side since Saddlebreds use it regularly with some of the bigger, stronger studs.

Taylor Clark · Post by **Taylor Clark** » 17 years ago

I know AI is used (and correct me if I'm wrong on this) sometimes when people are breeding warmbloods (very popular in warmbloods) but when breeding a draft horse to a smaller Thoroughbred horse, and also to crossbreed ponies and horses. We've used AI to breed sporthorses but never when we breed Tbreds (so they can be registered in JC in case they get stolen or something)

Angela Dee Cochran · Post by **Angela Dee Cochran** » 17 years ago

Ok. I didnt know all of that. Part of me can understand that too. When I wanted to breed my mare a few years ago, the stallion I wanted for her was in California and going there with her was not an option of course, but they offered AI with him. ( I decided against breeding her at all though) So yeah the idea of breeding to him even though he was across the country was a nicer idea than sending her to a lesser horse here in Indiana. The fees would have been close too.

Sometimes I regret not breeding her because shes a REALLY nice mare with great conformation and a nice pedigree- I bet she would have had a NICE baby. She will be 18 this year and although the vet says she still good in that dept I worry about her being bred the first time at so late of an age. Not to mention with her vet bills she has now, Im not sure how much all the bills from her care while in foal would be. I might talk to the vet about it this year but I doubt I will do it.

Thanks for answering my question!

Martin Pennington · Post by **Martin Pennington** » 17 years ago

Also with AI you can bottle sperm and send it half way round the world. The sire wouldn't even have to cover any mares at all, he could end "covering" 500 mares in a year etc

IsaP · Post by **IsaP** » 17 years ago

Uh.. no, Martin. You can't collect from a stud multiple times a day and honestly expect a good sample. Many times, if we did collect multiple times in one day, it was to augment the sample we already had. It's physically impossible for a stud to cover 500 mares and produce babies from those mares.. even with AI. AI is not semen creation, it's simply collection of the normal production and sent somewhere else to be inserted by a human, not the stud.

Honestly.. where do y'all get this information??