[QUOTE=alexandra;5582663]
Coming from a different area and culture I would like to raise a question.
Looking at the nice side for the MOs, I also see some points from the SO side.
how can you control your breeders tell the truth as in one example ? how do you do your financial planning if at any time a MO can come around and ask again for service ? What do you do if you sell the stallion or just want to quit his life as breeding stallion and want to ride him etc. etc.
I wuld rally be interested if lowering the stud fee to something that we on our side come acrosse, no collection fees and no LFG (but a 50% discount in next year) would not give an easier business and maybe more business in the end ?
I mean these days breeding is some much easier than it used to be. I as a mare owner would jump on that train. (well as I only know it this way - I may be biased ?)[/QUOTE]
MO Honesty: I only know of one person that had a similar story to the earlier one about mutilple incidents of shipped semen later resulting in multiple foals. Since the spares were unreported they could not get papers…but that didn’t seem to mean much to the unethical MO.By by and large I don’t think it happens much. Unless you inseminate your own horses you also need an unethical vet to help you here. With the APHA breeding certs the paperwork sent along with the semen has a form the inseminating vet has to sign that he inseminated mare x on this date. If he keeps inseminating differnent mares with the same name on the paperwork he has to have some clue that something isn’t right. Although…if the MO is going for unethical breedings in the first place I suppose they would not be handing the breeding cert papers to the vet to sign either. Depends on if the semen was sent to the MO or the vets office. Personally there was only 1 time I sent semen to a MO and not to their vets office. It was a “I need it today/she is ovulating” deal so I met the MO halfway on the road between the collection station and her vets office as delivery was faster than FedEx for a Need It Now deal. So…on the whole I suppose you could help prevent this by having a policy of only shipping to vet offices where the vet has to see the paperwork. It is not foolproof if you have a crooked vet like in the first story that the vet was a relative…but that is probably a rare thing.
If the stallion quits standing for whatever reason: If the SO offers a LFG then they need to be prepared to legally refund the stud fee if a MO paid and the SO cannot honor the contract. That said I had that happen to me personally. I bought a breeding to a stallion that was gelded and sold as a riding horse. The farm closed up shop and went out of business. Technically I should have been able to sue to get my $ back but the reality was…it was an out of state SO, the farm and the owner went bankrupt. It would have been throwing good money after bad to try and get blood out of a stone. I got screwed. But, that does not really happen often either. I sweated this one out my previous stallions last year at stud. He broke his leg and had to be euthanizedf in the fall of that year after the breeding season was over. I was praying all the MOs had healthy foals as if they did not I would be refunding stud fees as I could not honor a rebreed with the loss of the stallion. Fortunately all the mares from his last year at stud had healthy foals and it was a non issue.
Scheduling the life of a stallion where MOs can come around “anytime”: this varies with what you put in a contract. Most contracts stipulate what time of the year the stallion is standing (say March to August). If it is a show stallion there may be blackout dates where he is not available or the SO may subsitute frozen for fresh during those times. Some stallion owners only show locally during the breeding season if they don’t want to offer a frozen subsitute and the stallion is at a show. It is normal for a contract to expire after 2 years. Most contracts I have dealt with also limit you to 3 collections in a season. Really this makes sense as if your mare is not preggo in 3 tries…something is wrong and you better stop and figure out what it is if it is anything other than FedEx lost your shipment or the mare ovualted early. some stallions do in fact NOT stand with a LFG. This is normally frozen stuff. You buy a dose and that is it. There is nothing wrong with standing a stallion with no LFG…even with fresh…it’s just that the price needs to reflect it. The stallion had better stand for a lower fee than one with a LFG.
In general it is to the SOs financial advantage to offer a higher stud fee and a LFG because for most MOs the biggest expense is the vet bills involved in insemination (all the US/farm calls before and after the breeding etc) so they are going to do their best to get it right the first time. If most mares catch on the first try and you charged 1500 for a stud fee, you will do better as the stallion owner than if you offered him for 500.00 no LFG and most of the mares took on the first try and you only had a couple that needed 2 or 3 cycles. It would however eliminmate the more rare issue of unauthorized extra foals from mares declared not in foal.
Joe Pimentel has also been fantastic over the years - I have one mare we tried mult years and mult times before she finally got pregnant, I also know that he has given breedings to MOs for foals that have died weeks after birth for various reasons.