A little story / SEMORAN at OSU

[aurora]

I'll tell you all the names after I get the foal certificate. Here is the gist of the phone conversations I had with the farm.

Ring...
Hello?
(me) I would like to inquire about breeding my mare to your stallion, yada yada yada... How is his fertility?
His fertility is fine.
(me) OK, I'll bring the mare next Monday.

BASED ON THIS PHONE CALL, I BOUGHT A NO-GUARANTEE SEASON TO THE STALLION!

Ring...
(me) Have you had a chance to check out my mare and is she ready to breed?
Yada yada yada...
Well, you know, our stallion is only getting about 70% of his mares in foal and that is with careful management.
(me) Well, since she is in heat now, go ahead and breed the mare.
OK, we will.....

Ring....
Hello?
(me) I am calling to check on my mare to see if she is checked in foal.
Let me check...no, she isn't. You know, the stallion is only getting 50% of his mares in foal. Perhaps you would like to switch to another [lesser] stallion?
(me) No, just breed the mare again.

Ring...
Hello?
(me) I am calling to check on my mare to see if she got in foal?
Yes, she is checked in foal. Congratulations. Yada yada yada....
(me) How many of his mares did the stallion get in foal this season?
Oh, it was somewhere between 30 and 35% mares got pregnant.

[sprucie]

It sure is a frustrating thing, and I had the exact same problem with a warmblood stallion. I ended up having to switch to a stallion I don't really care for, or I would have lost the stud fee. The other problem I had is that the mare is foaling very late this year, and I'll have to leave her open until next spring . I wish stallion owners were more upfront about their stallion's fertility, and since this experience, I have decided to stick with only highly reputable owners.

[Pete]

Hi Sprucie and Aurora,

You can get an idea of the stallion' fertility by checking the statistics on the JockeyClub site (WWW.JockeyClub.Com).

It won't prevent this problem, but it may help.

Even well intentioned farms give you fertility information from the previous year, so if you're dealing with an aging stallion whose fertility has become a question mark, use care.

Regards,

Pete

[TBLADY]

was this an older stallion?

[sprucie]

In my case it was a warmblood stallion, and the farm was supposed to have an excellent reputation. The stallion in question is older, but I have seen lots of older stallions be able to get the mares settled with no problems. I foolishly assumed that a farm with their reputation would not offer a stallion with almost zero fertility, but I later found out that the fertility problem is not due to age. He hasn't been able to get much pregnant for his entire stud career. I did ask for statistics, and they gave numbers that sounded good, but it just proves you have to talk to others and make sure the stallion is not "known" to have fertility problems.

[Roguelet]

Pete: As a stallion owner, I HATE that statistic. Here's why: I happen to have a very fertile stallion. He, as a rule, has no problem settling mares. His actual fertility rate should be based on how many mares he breeds vs. how many mares he settles. After that, if the mare aborts, absorbs, or delivers a dead foal, or one that never gets reported, due to the mare's health or stress level, management, or mare owner decision, it should not affect my stallion's "fertility" percentage, but it does. He can settle all of his mares, but if half of those mares end up being stressed, mismanaged, get sick, die, or their owners never do the paperwork, then it makes the fertility of my stallion look bad. I think it's a flawed statistic for that reason.

[aurora]

This is a young stallion and there is no doubt that the manager knew the stallion had a problem from the get go.

The stallion owners are also in collusion as they are selling mares that didn't get in foal with a right of return for next year. Good grief, who would send a mare to a stallion if they knew he was only getting 30 - 35% of his mares in foal.

[austique]

Problem is they may never know. I know of a smaller farm in OK (now defunct) that wouldn't report any mares bred until they'd been vet-checked in foal to raise their numbers. Perhaps in an act of supreme karma they had a lot of abortions and dead foals in mares that were otherwise totally healthy. I wish they would develop a statistic of mares covered and pronounced in foal at the end of the breeding season to give a more timely statistic for breeders to use, but it would still be year old information. I went through something similar to Aurora in fact almost identical with an older stallion who shall remain nameless except I didn't get the option of switching to another stallion.

[Pete]

Hi Rougelet,

I understand your distaste for the raw statistics but they are one of the few objective tools that a breeder has to look at. I further agree that the data is not always clearly indicative of fertility, especially in regional markets. I place far more emphasis on these statistics when they are from Kentucky (where there are deep and centralized resources for the industry) and then from a major farm.

As a regional stallion farm you're far more exposed to the inadequacies of individual breeders and the unavailability of resources (especially specialized like equine repro).

Breeders should be aware of the general fertility statistics by area. The last time I read these statistics broken down by state, Kentucky had 69% live foals from covers, Florida and Maryland were about 61% and New York 60%. Many other states were in the 50%s. Clearly the stallions outside of Kentucky aren't less fertile; the breeders aren't as successful in getting their mares to term.

I purchased a young mare that had been open the previous year. She had been bred to a stallion standing on a farm where there was near anarchy and from my own experience with this farm (in the same year) it was nearly impossible to get a mare settled with a single cover. That mare has been bred three times since, has two February foals and is back in foal on 3/9 in 2005.

The breeder’s must take responsibility for the pregnancy, its’ success and must also be objective about the care that they are receiving. There are no guarantees that a settled mare will produce a live foal. If as a breeder you are getting your mare in foal and not getting live foals, change what you’re doing.

If a breeder sees data about a stallion standing in Montana who was bred 2 times with 2 live foals, they shouldn’t assume that the stallion is highly fertile. Likewise another Montana stallion with 5 live foals from 11 mares covered isn’t necessarily less fertile.

Rougelet, I’d agree that the number of mares that a stallion gets in foal would be a great (even essential) addition to the stallion fertility data. I agree that these numbers can skew perception, especially for regional sires, but as of now this is the data that we have and it’s the same for all stallions and thus there’s value to the breeder.

Personally I’ve found most farms to be honest and forthcoming about the fertility of their stallions. I accepted a foal share to a stallion that I knew had declining fertility without success (5 covers). This year his fertility completely evaporated. My bad. The same mare took on one cover this year.

Regards,

Pete

[aurora]

I thought it was time to fill out the rest of the story.

Stallion is Semoran, 'farm' is Oklahoma State University.

Mares at Thomas Sale Company's last sale in August that went empty at OSU were being sold with a right of return to Semoran. GOOD LUCK!

[austique]

In fairness to OSU, it wasn't their stallion and they went off the fertility report they were provided by the owner. They realized the stallion had issues after he bred his first round of mares and they began managing him appropriately and by the way I found this out in June when I had a mare shipped in there from Kentucky and the manager made an offhand remark that he hoped the stallion would go somewhere else next year. He did finish out the year with 70% mares vet checked in foal at the farm. Semoran bred a severly limited amount of mares (5) in 2004 and got 80% live foals, but when he bred 21 mares in 2003 he got 43% live foals. In 2002, he was at 59%. In 2001, he was at 49%. In 2001, he was at 51%. That info was out there to be had for you and OSU.

I realize that the situation is frustrating as I went through a similar issue with Prized this year, but if I had researched a little better I would have found that Prized fertility had been poor for most of his career.

The stallion is now gone. He will stand at Oklahoma Equine Lameness Center next year along with the rest of their reproductively challenged roster.

[Thunder]

[aurora]

I beg to differ. The stallion manager, AC told me himself that the stallion got only 30 - 35% of his mares in foal and that was in late May, maybe June. I don't know a what point in time that you were told that Semoran had 70% checked in foal but this just justifies my belief that the management at OSU was not being truthful about the horse's fertility.

[austique]

AC told me somewhere around the end of June, but I wasn't sending any mares to the stallion and have known AC for a while so I don't see a reason why he would lie to me, but who knows. I also know of another person who sent four mares up there and they caught all four of those to Semoran. I do know they were unhappy with the stallion fertility wise and he was having to be intensively managed, so for anyone looking at him now that he has moved to Oklahoma Equine Lameness Center I would seriously think twice.

OSU does a lot of good work and this is actually the second time they've had a client send in a stallion with bad fertility (Avie's Copy in 2004). I know that in the case of Avie's Copy they did a full workup which showed his fertility to be average, but he failed to settle all but 1 or 2 of the mares bred to him. Needless to say they are not taking any more client stallions and I was told they wanted out of the thoroughbred breeding business altogether by the end of this year or next.

[roving boy]

Following up on Pete's earlier comment, the stallion's job is to impregnate the mare - if the mare is in foal at 15 or 16 days when ultra-sounded, then the stallion has done his job. Absorptions, abortions, still births and short-lived foals should not be considered in stallion fertility numbers.

If you do not believe the numbers are significantly impacted by management, take the overall live foal percentage for stallions standing for $5000 or less and compare it with the same for stallions standing for $20,000 +. I have never done this comparison but would bet my life that the $20,000+ stallions have significantly better live foal percentages.

Also, while most stallion managers tell the truth, some do not....and some of those are at very strong farms.