Frozen semen is valuable, finite, and easy to lose track of. A single stallion's collection might be spread across multiple tanks, and every dose you cannot account for is a breeding you cannot sell. Good inventory practice keeps your dose count accurate from intake to shipment.
Know what a "dose" means for you
Before counting anything, define your unit. Frozen semen is stored in straws, but a breeding dose may be one straw or several, depending on the stallion and the insemination protocol. Record both:
- straws — the physical unit in the tank;
- doses — the breeding unit you sell and allocate.
Keeping the ratio explicit avoids the classic error of selling more doses than the straws support.
Track storage location
Every dose should be traceable to a physical location so it can be found and shipped without thawing the wrong tank.
- Tank and canister identifiers.
- Straw count per stallion per location.
- Collection date and batch, if quality varies between collections.
Storage housekeeping
Check nitrogen levels on a schedule and log top-ups. A tank that runs dry is a total loss with no warning, so the maintenance log matters as much as the inventory.
Allocate before you ship
When a breeding is booked, allocate doses to it rather than leaving inventory as one undifferentiated pool. Allocation answers "how many uncommitted doses do I actually have left to sell?" — the number that matters for booking decisions.
- Mark doses reserved against a specific contract or mare.
- Keep a clear split between allocated and spare (uncommitted) doses.
- Update the count the moment a dose ships, not at the end of the week.
Shipping frozen doses
A frozen shipment leaves your control the moment the courier collects it, so capture the details at hand-off: number of doses, tank/shipper used, tracking number, and the destination. Record it against the breeding so the mare owner and your own accounts agree on what left and when.
In StallionApp you can log collections and doses, mark doses as allocated or spare, advertise uncommitted doses on the Spare Dose List, and attach shipment details and tracking to each request — so the tank, the contract, and the invoice all reference the same dose count.
Inventory checklist
- Straw-to-dose ratio defined per stallion.
- Every dose traceable to a tank and canister.
- Nitrogen levels checked and top-ups logged.
- Allocated vs spare doses tracked separately.
- Shipments recorded with dose count and tracking at hand-off.
Accurate inventory is what lets you say "yes" to a booking with confidence — and never oversell a stallion you cannot deliver.