Thinking About Collecting Your Own Stallion?

You have a stallion, he's being collected at the local reproductive vet or stallion station and it's going well, but you are considering setting yourself up for collection and shipping at home. What do you need to know?

Collecting and shipping semen from your own farm can be incredibly appealing, especially if your stallion is getting busier in terms of stud contracts. Depending on how far your closest stallion station is, you may find that you are spending half the season driving him to and fro. Often, due to mares not always liking to give much notice prior to ovulation, you get a last minute semen request and you have to drop your plans for the day to haul him to the stallion station. Then there is the stress of even getting a last minute appointment at all if they are in the height of the busy season.

Or you might have chosen to have him stand at a stallion station all season to avoid the haul in and out fiasco. This means you don't get to see him or ride him much all season.

Collecting and shipping from home eases a lot of these pain points for stallion owners. It is something that we at StallionApp encourage stallion owners to look into as it can be the best situation for the horse (less stressful) and for the owner. However, there is substantial education, equipment, and training that go into collecting a stallion and from a safety viewpoint, this is not something you can just decide to do one day without due diligence and thorough planning.

In this article, we outline some of the things that you need to be thinking about if you want to collect and ship your stallion from home. This should by no means be considered an alternative to formal education and training — more, this is an article to get you thinking about what you need to consider in terms of your own education and facility setup.

Is your stallion suitable to be collected at home?

If you have not observed your stallion being collected, now is the time to start. Is he easy or difficult to collect? Some stallion stations do not like the owner or trainer being present while they collect their stallion, as the stallion might be put off performing in front of a trainer who has in the past discouraged them from acting studdish. But if your stallion station does allow it, go watch. Watch a few times and watch carefully. Start to study things like:

• Does he need a tease mare present in the breeding shed to collect?
• How many jumps on the phantom does he take on average before ejaculation?
• Does he mount the phantom in an organized fashion, or does he tend to move around?
• How does he dismount the phantom afterwards?
• How does he behave on the way to the breeding shed, and when he first enters the area with the phantom in?
• What sort of AV are they using, and what temperature and weight is it set at?

A stallion needs to be willing and able to mount safely, achieve an erection and ejaculate into an artificial vagina. Some stallions always need a tease mare present, and some can learn to collect without. If yours is a stallion that needs a tease mare, is this something that you can invest in?

We would not recommend that you consider setting yourself up to collect your first stallion at home if he has not yet been fully trained on the collection procedure and the phantom. Most reproductive vets and stallion stations offer collection training and we cannot emphasize enough how worthwhile it is to have a professional teach your stallion how to collect. Like any aspect of training horses, training to collect properly is a skill we teach our stallions. It takes practice and a skilled trainer. But even more than with other aspects of horsemanship, you risk ruining a stallion's sexual confidence in the breeding shed if you handle him incorrectly in there. Do not underestimate the importance of an experienced stallion handler or reproductive vet when it comes to the initial training of collection for your stallion.

Is your facility suitable?

You will need a dedicated breeding shed, or breeding area. If you live somewhere with a lot of precipitation, a covered breeding shed is advisable. The breeding area needs to be spacious, and free from distractions. A quiet area. If you are going to have a tease mare, then a set of stocks close to the phantom is advisable. Some setups have a stall close to their breeding area so they can put a tease mare in there. The area needs to be free from clutter or any objects at all other than what is needed for collection. We recommend visiting a few different collection facilities so that you can start to build a picture of different setups, and consider what is right for your space.

You will also need a lab area — a clean space for semen processing after you have collected. As time is of the essence after a collection you need to think about the logistics and layout of your facility. After collection the stallion needs to be put away and the collection needs to be taken to the processing area as soon as possible so that processing can begin. If it takes you 10 minutes to get from the breeding barn to your processing area, you are already on the back foot and your collection quality can suffer.

Are you suitably educated?

If you're serious about bringing a collection in-house, get some hands-on training first. Colorado State University, for example, includes stallion handling, semen collection, preparation of cooled semen and semen evaluation in its 5-day equine reproduction training course. Taking a course on stallion collection will not only take you over everything that you need to know and give you hands-on experience, but it will also give you a peer group. Most classes allow for continued support after the class is finished, and will set you up with an online group where you can ask questions and support one another.

For stallion collection we can split the education you need into two categories:

1. Collecting the stallion
2. Processing the collection for shipping

Collecting the stallion

The artificial vagina (AV)

There are a number of different types of AV. Most teaching courses tend to use one or the other, so it is likely that when you start out you will simply use whatever model you were trained on. In time, and after you have used a number of different types, you will likely develop your own preference. Regardless of the AV style, the concept is the same: the AV needs to be filled with warm water between 115 and 125 degrees Fahrenheit, and a collection bottle with a filter to filter out the gel fraction of the ejaculate will be fastened to the end of the AV. When the stallion ejaculates, the sperm will travel through the filter and only the seminal fluid and the ejaculate will make it into the collection bottle. The AV needs to be prepared and ready before the stallion is brought into the breeding shed.

The process

Stallion collection facilities will differ somewhat in their protocol, and we encourage you to adopt the protocol of the facility that you go to for training, but this is a general outline of how a stallion is collected.

The stallion is brought into the breeding shed. He is teased to the point that he drops his penis down and achieves an erection. At this point he is considered ready to jump. His penis should be washed at this point with a cup of warm water to remove any surface debris. He is then led to the phantom and allowed to jump it. When he is situated on the phantom the AV is carefully placed over his penis and held at the appropriate height against the phantom. He will generally get himself settled into a position where he can give three good thrusts, and this is when he will ejaculate. After ejaculation the AV is removed and the stallion should be encouraged to carefully dismount the phantom.

If you are collecting your stallion for immediate on-farm use with your own mares, then part two — processing the collection for shipping — is less important. Some stallion owners will inseminate raw semen without extending for on-farm use, but it is generally advised that unless you are inseminating the mare immediately, that extender be used.

We would still advise that you analyze every collection for on-farm use and record volume, concentration, total motility and progressive motility. Keeping accurate logs of these numbers is due diligence, in that it gives you a measure of your stallion's reproductive health.

Processing the semen for shipping

So let's say that you successfully collected your stallion and that collection is to be shipped. You will hopefully have a filtered gel-free collection that you can process for shipping. The next thing that needs to happen is that the collection should be analyzed for volume, concentration, and motility, and these numbers will help you determine what the ratio of semen extender to raw ejaculate is for shipping.

There are a number of different ways that you can do this, and a number of different solutions in terms of equipment to help you determine volume, concentration, and motility. We are going to assume that you won't be investing in a $25,000+ premium laboratory CASA at this point, and for at-home stallion collections there are a lot of lower-cost alternatives that will do the job for you.

The densimeter is a machine that you can use to determine semen concentration. An accurate value for concentration is important as you need to be able to work out how much semen extender you need in order to reach the desired shipping concentration of 25–50 million sperm per ml.

A microscope will enable you to eyeball total motility and progressive motility, but keep in mind that especially if you are new to this, your eye can be deceiving. If you get progressive motility wrong and overestimate it, you run the risk of not shipping enough progressively motile sperm for the mare owner to achieve a pregnancy with. Systems such as the iSperm or Androscope will give you a more accurate account of total and progressive motility as well as concentration, so these are what we recommend for people who are wanting to get started collecting their own stallion at home. These range from $2,500 to $5,000.

As you grow more experienced, you will undoubtedly explore the different options that are available in terms of semen analysis. But a good starting point is the iSperm or the Androscope.

Once you have determined volume, concentration, total motility and progressive motility, you are ready to extend the semen into shippable doses. In order to be shipped, semen needs to be diluted into semen extender. A stallion semen extender is a fluid mixed with a stallion's ejaculate after collection to protect, nourish, and preserve the sperm cells. The extender calculation is important because if you ship semen that is too dense in the extender, the die-off rate will be high. If you ship semen that is too diluted in extender, you won't have enough sperm cells in the shipment.

Luckily for you, you no longer have to be great at math to work this ratio out. We have built a feature into StallionApp collection logs so that when you have entered the volume of the collection, the concentration, the total motility and the progressive motility, StallionApp will calculate the semen extender to raw semen ratio for you. While we do encourage you to learn the math so that you know it, when time is of the essence as it is after collecting a stallion, it can be helpful to have software in your pocket that will do this for you.

Once you have extended your collection, you will transfer it to the semen-safe syringes, or baggies, that you are shipping your doses in, and finally into your cooled semen shipping containers.

The data sheet

After you have analyzed your semen, extended appropriately, and packed for cooled shipping, you should print a data sheet to send with the shipment. This allows the receiving vet to know what the semen looked like at the time of collection. You can do this in StallionApp after you have logged a collection — simply hit the "Print data sheet" button and you are good to go.

We recommend inviting the receiving vet to give you feedback on the quality of the semen that you sent them the next day when it arrives, so that you can build a picture of what your stallion looks like after shipping. We also encourage you to always keep behind a cooled sample of the extended semen so that you can do an analysis yourself at 24 and at 28 hours. The more data you can log about your stallion's semen, its longevity and motility, the better.

What equipment do you need for stallion collection?

Several types of artificial vagina are available, including Colorado, Missouri and Japanese models. The choice is partly a matter of stallion preference and management.

What do you need in terms of a lab?

You need a lab area. Somewhere to:

• Measure the volume, concentration, and motility of the semen
• Keep an incubator so you can hold the semen at 37°C (98.6°F) while you are processing it
• Add extender
• Calculate the appropriate dose
• Package the semen
• Prepare it for controlled cooling

At a professional reproductive facility, this happens in a laboratory located conveniently close to the collection area. At the very least you need a clean, organized workspace where you can do this without rushing around looking for equipment while your semen sits on the counter.

What do you need for semen analysis?

At a minimum, you'll want to be able to assess semen volume, sperm concentration and motility. Morphology may also be evaluated as part of a broader assessment of the stallion. These are standard components of stallion semen evaluation.

This means buying or having access to appropriate laboratory equipment. Depending on your setup, that might include:

• Microscope
• Sperm counting equipment — CASA, iSperm, Androscope, densimeter, etc.
• Pipettes
• Accurate measuring equipment
• Appropriate temperature-control equipment — incubator
• Semen extender
• Disposable collection and processing supplies

A quick note on semen extender

Stallions differ in how well their semen responds to cooling, and different extenders can produce different results. CSU recommends a chilled-semen evaluation specifically to determine how well your stallion's semen maintains motility and which extender is most suitable. BotuPharma actually commercially produces an extender test kit in which you have a sample of each of their most popular extenders, and you can run your own at-home experiment to see which one your stallion's sperm survive best in.

We highly recommend testing your stallion at the beginning of each season for extender preference, as it can change year to year.

How much will it cost to set yourself up?

Any experienced breeder will tell you that in the same way there is no end to the amount of horse tack that you can buy, there is no end to the amount of breeding equipment you can buy! But to help you get a picture, we are going to estimate some costs for you.

We estimate that you can probably get yourself set up for collecting your stallion at home for between $6,000 on the low end and $18,000 on the high end, depending on your equipment choices. If we consider that to have a stallion collected at a stallion station or repro vet can be anything from $250 to $500 a time, and that you will be collecting this fee from mare owners, then you can figure out how many collections you need to do before your investment starts to pay for itself.

Money aside, many stallion owners choose to take the plunge for convenience. Not having to haul to a stallion station, being able to collect for their own mares any day of the week, being able to collect later into the season than most stallion stations stay open — this is particularly attractive for the warmblood market, where it is becoming more common for mare owners to request breedings later in the season.

If this sounds like a lot, we only skimmed the surface today

While we wanted to provide an overview of things to start thinking about if you are considering collecting your stallion at home, we could not possibly fit everything into one article. There are books on this subject, and we recommend you read them, but most of all we recommend you take a hands-on educational course from a trusted reproductive clinic. So much of this needs to be learnt via hands-on experience.

We also recommend that you find a stallion owner who collects at home already that you can use as a mentor. Having someone who will help you figure things out is invaluable. This is one of the reasons that we built a social media element into StallionApp — so that breeders can connect with one another, ask questions, and learn from one another. Experienced horse breeders have a wealth of information and, most of the time, they love to share it and help others who are just starting out.

The increasing costs of horse ownership are seeing many breeders struggle to survive and breeding programs closing. At StallionApp we recognize that for a lot of breeders, the only way that they stay afloat is by bringing things like stallion collection in-house. With proper training and education, a good breeding community around them, and breeding software management such as StallionApp, stallion owners can learn what they need to know in order to collect and ship from home.