Anyone know any wives tales or studies that talk about breeding for a certain sex.
Not long ago I read a study out of NZ that said if the mare was lossing weight at time of breeding you increased you chance of having a filly and if the mare was gaining weight you had a better chance of having a colt.
I am breeding my mare this spring and if I had a choice I would choose a filly.
So any suggestions?
Get the sperm sorted. That’s your best bet.
Horse sperm has lower survivability going through a sorter and then getting shipped to where the mare is. If you know a company who is sorting, ship the mare to the sorter company, get it sorted and immediately inseminate the mare with it.
There was some discussion on the Warmblood Breeders Group on Facebook that with fresh semen if you stood the semen syringes plunger side up, the XX’s sink towards the hub (where the tubing is attached) and the XY’s tend to swim faster and upwards towards the plunger. Stand the shipment box with plunger side down if you want the XY’s to swim towards the hub. Because they’re chilled, you would have to make sure the position was maintained for a few hours because they are pretty sluggish when cool. I would not want to warm up the semen before positioning as you may lose a fair bit of fertility for some stallions. Either way, you are supposed to only depress the plunger half-way, leaving half the semen in the syringe. Many stallion owners provide you 2 full syringe doses so you are still using a total of 1 dose and then if ovulation doesn’t occur as anticipated, well then at least you still have the remaining semen to put in.
This would not be 100% fool proof, but supposedly it increases your odds of getting either just a colt or just a filly.
Have never tried this method myself, but it’s certainly an inexpensive experiment to try.
Maybe someone on here may have tried it and what are the results?
We had seven foals last year and all were fillies… I was hoping for colts, go figure. I would be interested in how “not” to breed for fillies!
I believe the only scientific method is sperm sorting which has been done in the cattle industry for quite some time. However, it still has something like a > 5% “failure” rate, meaning you get the “wrong” sex, which in the cattle industry doesn’t make that much difference. Little different though when it comes to your favorite mare having that one foal of the year… 
I’ve heard that the closer you breed to ovulation, the more you are likely to get a colt, as their sperm swim faster. If that held true, though, it would seem that all frozen inseminations would result in colts.
I have almost always breed within twelve to twenty-four hours of ovulation with cooled semen and have gotten mostly fillies.
Tell the mare you really want a colt?
I have nothing to add to the discussion but congrats and good luck! My mare is 3 for 3 on filly’s… I guess she’s trying to convince me I really am a mare person.
Pray, I was very lucky when I did my first breeding I also really wanted a filly, not only did I get a filly, I got a super filly. Wish I had a more scientific answer. Good luck.
We have had six colts in a row and I had been hoping at least a few of those would have been fillies. I wish one of you would loan me your filly “luck”! :lol:
Announce on COTH you REALLLLLY want a colt. You would die for a colt. You would do ANNNNYTHING for a colt. Poof, you’ll get a filly. For good measure- get a deposit on a colt…
The sperm sorting is the only proven “scientific” way, but you could try the NZ method. I read that study too, so I tried to mimic it.
I started some months ahead, giving the mare extra rations so she was gaining weight…if you have a really fat mare, you don’t have to do this, but my mare was not the easiest keeper in the first place, so I didn’t want her getting too down on her weight.
Then, about a month before I chose to breed her, I cut all that extra stuff out. In the case of a super good/fat doer, you would cut her rations drastically…50% or more. Obviously you don’t do it overnight, but you want to try to mimic what the researchers saw in the study…when resources were scarce and mares were losing weight during the breeding season, the following year produced more fillies. Now, that could also have been because the male embryos were weaker and died off easier…so I suppose you could run the risk of losing the entire pregnancy…again, the study was by observation, not a controlled/double blind sort of thing…
But I took the chance. After I bred the mare, I kept her on reduced rations for another 2 wks…so about 8 wks total…6 wks prior & 2 wks after conception. I figured it took time for the body to “set” itself, although I was just experimenting.
However I DID get a filly! Of course, there was a 50/50 chance I would have gotten one anyway, but it’s something easy to try.
Yeah, you have a ticked off mare for 2 mos, but then, after conception, you simply feed them back up. And the idea is NOT to starve the mare, so I sure won’t try this on a mare who is lean to begin with…that would just be cruel.
But I know I have afew mares that could actually benefit from losing weight, and studies have also shown that mares slightly on the leaner side get in foal easier than fat mares, so I don’t see a big down side.
Again, don’t do anything overnight…take at least a week to go either way…
If you breed early in a state with winter (like I do), reducing rations in Feb or Mar. actually does mimic what horses are exposed to in Nature…in times of stress they are going to come out of winter and into breeding season on the lean side.
Good luck…I’ve had more fillies than colts overall, but every time I want a colt, I get a filly!
This will actually be what I have to do with her anyway, because she is a super easy keeper and after a few weeks on the spring grass I have to stick her in a “fat field” to keep her from becoming a chunk.
[QUOTE=Kyzteke;7236848]
The sperm sorting is the only proven “scientific” way, but you could try the NZ method. I read that study too, so I tried to mimic it.
I started some months ahead, giving the mare extra rations so she was gaining weight…if you have a really fat mare, you don’t have to do this, but my mare was not the easiest keeper in the first place, so I didn’t want her getting too down on her weight.
Then, about a month before I chose to breed her, I cut all that extra stuff out. In the case of a super good/fat doer, you would cut her rations drastically…50% or more. Obviously you don’t do it overnight, but you want to try to mimic what the researchers saw in the study…when resources were scarce and mares were losing weight during the breeding season, the following year produced more fillies. Now, that could also have been because the male embryos were weaker and died off easier…so I suppose you could run the risk of losing the entire pregnancy…again, the study was by observation, not a controlled/double blind sort of thing…
But I took the chance. After I bred the mare, I kept her on reduced rations for another 2 wks…so about 8 wks total…6 wks prior & 2 wks after conception. I figured it took time for the body to “set” itself, although I was just experimenting.
However I DID get a filly! Of course, there was a 50/50 chance I would have gotten one anyway, but it’s something easy to try.
Yeah, you have a ticked off mare for 2 mos, but then, after conception, you simply feed them back up. And the idea is NOT to starve the mare, so I sure won’t try this on a mare who is lean to begin with…that would just be cruel.
But I know I have afew mares that could actually benefit from losing weight, and studies have also shown that mares slightly on the leaner side get in foal easier than fat mares, so I don’t see a big down side.
Again, don’t do anything overnight…take at least a week to go either way…
If you breed early in a state with winter (like I do), reducing rations in Feb or Mar. actually does mimic what horses are exposed to in Nature…in times of stress they are going to come out of winter and into breeding season on the lean side.
Good luck…I’ve had more fillies than colts overall, but every time I want a colt, I get a filly![/QUOTE]
