Has anyone ever heard of using a Kickstarter type of business model for stallion semen collection? I plan on collecting my stallion (for frozen only) , but the expense of collection for export worldwide is approximately $12,500. It would be advantageous to have contributions to defray the cost and commitments to semen purchase. I have quite a few people around the world who already say they will buy semen, however, an investment is better than a promise.
Anyone want to brainstorm with me here about how such a model could work?
I believe the term you are looking for is called a syndicate which are extremely common in the TB world. In fact I don’t know of any TB stallions who are not part of a syndicate. Basically they sell X number of shares in the stallion which entitles the shareholder to breed Y numbers of mares each year in perpetuity. Those shares are generally transferable so the shareholder can sell their share for that particular season, hopefully at a much larger price than they paid for it so everyone is happy.
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No, that doesn’t quite hit the spot because I am not looking to sell shares. I am familiar with stallion syndicates (grew up with a TB bloodstock agent father), and that isn’t the model I had in mind…quite, though perhaps I can cherrypick some aspects of it.
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Since it would be frozen semen, which means there is a limited number of doses, and a calculated cost of collection, the syndicate idea is not the perfect match. But good suggestion and I will chew on how to incorporate parts of it.
yikes, that seems sooo expensive. May I ask how that breaks down price-wise? What is the most expensive aspect of collection and storing?
Any sense of how many doses will you get for the $12,500? Assuming you’ve already done motility testing and know you will get viable semen, you could just do pre-orders for next year? $x discount if paid in full before 1/1/2022.
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The stallion hasn’t been in to the clinic yet. The first they will do, after teaching him to jump the phantom, is check his fresh semen, then do a test freeze/thaw. How many doses depends on how many collections and how much he produces per collection. All of that seems to be unclear at this point, so the price is also just an estimate.
One substantial part of the expense is that he has to do a month quarantine, and all the various tests required for export worldwide run up pretty quickly in price.
You have to do some test collections first to see if he will even be worth collecting for frozen. Some countries don’t allow frozen semen to be imported if it doesn’t have a post thaw above a certain percentage. If he can’t meet that, no sense in going through the entire process.
I know people who have said they need to sell x number of contracts to cover expenses for freezing. Contracts have to be paid in full before going through the quarantine and freezing process.
The thing to do is teach to collect and test the fresh semen on real mares and accomplish pregnancies. Then you know about how many collections it takes to produce x amount of breedings and if it would make sense to spend 12-15,000 to quarantine and freeze for export. Otherwise its a shot in the dark and a big expense that does not bring you a return. If you can sell/export about 20 breedings ( not doses) it may be break even.
Not all stallions with good fertility with fresh cooled freeze well. Post-thaw motility is not a sufficient measure of viability for producing pregnancies. The only way to prove fertility with frozen is to breed some mares with the thawed frozen semen and see if pregnancies result.
If pregnancies result THEN invest in the international freezing protocol if there is sufficient demand to support the expense.
Article part 1
relevant excerpt:
Stallion Variability
One vitally important point to note for both stallion and mare owners is that not all stallions have sperm that will survive the freezing and thawing processes. This is probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks seen with frozen equine semen. To compound this problem further, there is no predictable correlation between live cover, fresh or cooled semen fertility, and frozen semen viability. And one can add to that the fact that there is currently no single definitive test that has proven successful in testing thawed frozen semen for fertility other than pregnancy rates established with it’s use.
This is not to say that the failure rate is dramatic enough to prevent its use being feasible. Roughly 30% of stallions have sperm that will result in good quality thawed semen; a further 40% will have “acceptable” post-thaw results, and only 30% would be considered possessors of subfertile frozen semen. In other words, 70% of stallions have semen that is capable of achieving pregnancies once frozen and thawed [ more recent statistics reflect improved technique, extender and knowledge levels and are considered to be 75% ]. The process must however be carried out, and pregnancies achieved, in order to know what percentage group any individual stallion falls into. Research is being continually carried out to attempt to overcome these problems, and as the use of frozen semen becomes more popular, so the faster results will be achieved.
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