Have you had any experience with embryo transfer, how was the process? Are there currently any event or dressage mares that have embryos for sale? Essentially if you have a mare that is not suitable for breeding herself (poor conformation or other reason) can you buy an embryo from a superior mare (&stallion?), does the embryo fee also include AI?
Embryo transfer is not something that BEGINS with the recipient mare. The vet generally provides the recipient mare out of the recipient mare herd.
This looks life a decent overview:
http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/keys-successful-equine-embryo-transfer
1 Like
I may be wrong but when looking to do embryo tansplant you would’nt want a mare with poor conformation because you are still using her egg to create the foal so her confirmation will be passed along regardless.
I think your question is how to find recepient mare? Your donor mare will be the biological mother of the foal so you want her to be good enough to be bred. Generally, serious equine repro clinics will have recepient mare bands available. They will rent the mare once the embryo is implented. If you are in fact looking for donor mares, sometimes some breeder will sell “custom foals” options where they will breed their mares with the stallion of your choice. You can also search for mares for lease. Some owner may agree to sell you the embryo if you take charge of all other fees.
3 Likes
I think the OP is talking about using the “poor conformation” mare as the recip, not the donor.
To answer your question MJT, there are about as many ways to go about this as there are breeding clinics. Your first step would be to contact the owner of the mare you are interested in obtaining an embryo from and seeing if they are willing to sell you an embryo. Doing an embryo transfer is not a quick or easy affair. You must sync the mares cycles, then breed the donor mare, then wait a few days to ensure conception, then flush and transfer the embryo to the donor mare. This means the donor mare is going to be out of work for anywhere from a week to several weeks.
Once you secure the mare your next step is securing semen from the stallion you would want to cross her with and a recip mare. Many breeding clinics have recip mares they lease out for this purpose, but it is not a cheap fee (typically $2,000-$5,000). You could secure your own mare and take her to the clinic, but again, you’re looking at purchase price, board and fees at the breeding clinic while the transfer is happening and shipping to you if the donor mare and breeding clinic are not close by.
Hopefully this helps. Embryo transfers are not cheap and I’d think most mare owners with mares actively competing would not want the down time associated with the process.
2 Likes
Thanks for posting this! I have a mare that I was considering as a donor mare, but I didn’t realize the down time involved.
I have bred mares who were in work, pretty much all of them in fact. Unless the clinic where they are being flushed is a long haul away it doesn’t seem like it would be that big a deal. Also, sometimes retired high level competition mares are available for embryos, owner may not want to risk mare carrying a foal or might want to get a few offspring per year instead of just 1.
Jennifer
The OP was asking if the recipient mare typically had poor conformation or other issues. Given how much time, money and effort it takes, I would not risk using a recipient mare that had serious conformational or soundness issues. A pregnancy lasts 11 months and you want the recipient mare to have an uneventful one. Why invite problems? Also, it is important that the recipient mare has a GOOD MIND. The last thing you want is some nasty or wacky recipient mare because she is the one raising the foal for the first few months. She is the one that will be teaching the foal how to be a horse. So you want a mellow and pleasant mare. Most of the recipients I have seen are drafts or draft crosses with decent conformation and nice personalities.
4 Likes
I use a facility a thousand miles away for my ET and recip needs. This next year will be the third time I’ve done it, the facility in Texas handled all of my needs and I wrote one check and it was very simple, foal is at my house. The facility I used in Florida was a cluster and I spent twice as much to 3 different facilities add ended up with no foal.
I’ll be going back to Texas in March. My show mare was gone for 2 months to get bred, but I waited until the recip was checked 40 days in foal before I went to pick them up, brought my mare and the recip home, foaled out and had 6 months after foaling to return the recip mare. Very simple, other than the thousand mile trip.
there’s really zero downtime. Our mare went to be inseminated, came back, was preg checked at home, want to clinic to be flushed.
This was a 5* mare during show season in Europe.
It depends, I think-- someone I know did it with her UL event horse, and while there was zero actual downtime (she lives like 10 minutes from New Bolton) she felt that the hormones made the mare almost unrideable.
We didn’t have this issue. I’m sure like with all things horse related, it depends on your horse.
OP - If I were you, I would skip all this complexity and buy a weanling or other youngster…
7 Likes
Agreed! You may likely end up paying the same amount of money for a nice weanling as you will having to purchase an embryo and have a repro specialist do their magic. 
And the cost of doing the ET will increase if it is not successful the first time around. Why not just look for a superior mare that is in foal to a stallion you like and purchase the foal in utero? Or purchase once the foal hits the ground? Or look for weanlings that are already out there and for sale?
4 Likes
Ive gotten mine cheaply off the track ( 500$) and used them with the P and E synch. 2 out fo 3 times, the cycles have synched well. the third time, I vitrified the embryo, and transferred it later ( didnt take)
