We will be test breeding with a young stallion in the spring. He has never bred before…although he has been trying to practice with a few stablemates in his field 
We want to eventually teach him how to ground collect and offer shipped semen to outside mares in a few years. I hear some people say we should be collecting from the get go, others saying we should just let him live cover the first few times. I have no idea what is best. Sigh! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
[QUOTE=Daventry;6049130]
We will be test breeding with a young stallion in the spring. He has never bred before…although he has been trying to practice with a few stablemates in his field 
We want to eventually teach him how to ground collect and offer shipped semen to outside mares in a few years. I hear some people say we should be collecting from the get go, others saying we should just let him live cover the first few times. I have no idea what is best. Sigh! Any help would be greatly appreciated.[/QUOTE]
Why risk an injury? And, if your plan is to be able to ship on him, why risk confusing him? I can honestly say, we have never, ever live covered any of our boys that are standing here. Ever. And all the boys that we start here, are started either on the mount or on the ground. Young colts are pastured together to play and learn proper social skills, but when it comes to breeding, live cover never enters the picture. Not worth the risks, in our ever so humble opinion 
Thanks for the info. I just wasn’t sure if sticking an AV on there the first time would end up confusing him more…especially if we didn’t have the temperature and tightness quite right We will definitely follow your advice and start with ground collecting from the get go. Am I to assume though that it won’t neccessarily be 110% successful for all young stallions on the first go?
[QUOTE=Daventry;6049177]
Thanks for the info. I just wasn’t sure if sticking an AV on there the first time would end up confusing him more…especially if we didn’t have the temperature and tightness quite right We will definitely follow your advice and start with ground collecting from the get go. Am I to assume though that it won’t neccessarily be 110% successful for all young stallions on the first go?[/QUOTE]
With young boys, start hotter and tighter with the AV. It’s easy enough to cool it down and loosen it, if you see it’s not to their preference. And when starting a stallion on the ground, you can figure that about 30% of them will get the hang of it immediately. So no…don’t expect immediate success. Don’t work with him longer than 30 minutes to avoid frustration and crankiness. And be PATIENT!
Kathy,
I’ll never forget your explanation that the first sexual experience for a stallion can have a lifetime effect. You, or Jos, said that a stallion can stick his head in a bucket of honey and bees and get stung, run off, and then come back for another try. A stallion may do this again and again. But if they have a bad breeding experience it can shut them down completely. I can’t remember exactly how you put it but the point was how important it is to make sure the first experience is a postive one. :yes:
I highly recommend to have a professional come help with phantom training or ground collection training. I have a friend right now who’s been trying to get her 3 year old stallion collected and it has failed so far. But she hasn’t been using professionals. It probably won’t cost that much and can save a lot of grief for the stallion and peeps involved. Set him up for success.
No worries. We ship semen on all three of our stallions, so have lots of experience at collecting. Kathy held my hand through teaching our first stallion to ground collect years ago, after he had only live covered for the first 15 years of his life. We’ve also successfully taught our second stallion (new stallion for us) to ground collect at the ripe old age of 22, after collecting off the breeding dummy his entire breeding career!
This young colt is a son of our first stallion, so we will take things slow and steady and hope we are in that 30th percentile. 
His dad was an extremely quick learner…so we are hoping those genes run deep.
As far as professionals in our area…Kathy knows about all of the horror stories of those people in our area. :no: One of which I really felt wrecked our stallion psychologically for quite awhile. I wouldn’t allow them touch my stallions with a ten foot pole. We ended up setting up our own lab at home and have been successfully collecting on our own now for 7 years. While I certainly do not consider myself an expert by any means, I feel confident that I can do a much better job and pay more attention to detail than anyone else in our area would. As well, any of the vets in the area that know we ground collect think we are off our rocker, or have never seen it done before…so I’m all our kid’s got!
That is so true! If you have bad “professionals” it can really mess things up! I was fortunate to have Kathy and Jos come help me get Bravo and Panzyr going. They saved me a lot of problems and I still managed to make a ton of mistakes all by myself!
I’m still mad at Kathy and Jos though for leaving Northern Ca. and moving to OK!
Kathy did a GREAT job teaching Mardi – he’s so, so easy. I am thankful for that great start each and every time we collect him. I never have to worry about anything with him.
But… since Kathy abandoned those of us on the west coast (lol), we have taught several of our own young stallions to collect. I think we’ve done four of them, if memory serves.
With our other stallions we have had a fairly easy time teaching them the ropes on collection. We have gone right to collection and have not done any live cover. I’ve figured it would just serve to confuse them later.
I’m lucky that I have my (extremely horse savvy) husband to help with this process, but for the most part it has gone smoothly. We just had one that strenuously objected to his first washing, but other than that we’ve not had any trouble and they catch on pretty fast.
From my very limited experience, I would recommend against liive cover for all the reasons mention and also it can become the cover of choice for some stallions–the only choice–and they will refuse to even look or be enticed by a phantom.
Sounds like you will do just fine. If do you run into problems and need a good vet to help out, Juan Samper offers those services - he’s at the BC Coast. He frequently gets “imported” to Germany and other places to advise in these matters and he is lovely to work with.
That would be way too far for me - 12 hour one way drive. If anything out of the ordinary happens, I’ll just fly Kathy up here :D…it will be much cheaper, and she is definitely the leading expert on ground collecting. Although, she may not be too happy about working in the Canadian winter! :lol: Although right now, we’ve been warmer than some parts of California and Florida for the last month. Go figure! 
[QUOTE=Daventry;6049823]
Although, she may not be too happy about working in the Canadian winter! :lol: Although right now, we’ve been warmer than some parts of California and Florida for the last month. Go figure! [/QUOTE]
Ha! Years ago, when we were doing a course in Idaho in February, both Jos and I agreed that if we never saw snow again, we’d probably be okay with that. So yeah, I’d whine…a LOT if I had to go up there right now. Especially as the current temperature here is <drum roll please>… 68 degrees Fahrenheit - that’s 20 degrees Celsius for all you Canucks :D! So, fingers crossed that you have a successful and easy session of ground collecting <LOL>! You can do it! I have the utmost confidence in your abilities!
Off topic a bit but - Kathy is there any chance you and Jos might make it to Ontario sometime in the near future to do a clinic? I’d love that, and I am sure there would be lots of others who would want to attend.
[QUOTE=Fred;6050177]
Off topic a bit but - Kathy is there any chance you and Jos might make it to Ontario sometime in the near future to do a clinic? I’d love that, and I am sure there would be lots of others who would want to attend.[/QUOTE]
We don’t have any scheduled up in your neck of the woods. We “will” schedule one if a group of people wish to try and put it together. We charge a flat fee plus travel expenses for a course of up to 20 people, so if anyone wishes to try and organize a course up there, feel free to drop me an email and I can go over all the details :). We’ve cut way back on the number of courses we do these days. And, until the economy does a bit more recovery, we will probably limit the amount of traveling we do :P!
Happy New Year everyone!
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