Contemporary Aspects of Embryo Transfer - A Brazilian Perspective

Introduction

MP Reprodução Equina is a partnership, localized in Bauru, middle-west of São Paulo State, which works mainly with equine reproduction.

History

The commercial embryo transfer program, was started in Brazil, by João Fleury, in 1985, using the surgical ET Technique.

In 1996, the non-surgical technique became more popular and, now, we do not have any news about someone using surgical technique in Brazil.

In 2008/09 breeding season approximately 10.000 of embryo transfers were made, becoming Brazil one of the leaders in number of ET in the world.

We started, in 1996, our commercial program using non-surgical transfer. That year, we got our first ET pregnancy after 13 flushing and 7 transfers. It was a little frustrating.

In 1997, we got better results, and then our program started getting more clients, making more flushing e getting more pregnancies. Last breeding season we finish with 523 pregnancies at 40 days, after 1152 flushing.

From 1997 to 2008, we change the main breed worked, going from PH to QH. We started making a good number of pregnancies, using clients’ recipients, and flushing a lot of mares out of our breeding center. At this time bigger we were more problems we found.

The Routine

In Brazil, depending the breed involved the procedure to manage the donor mares to be flushed is different.

The most vets involved with Mangalarga, Mangalarga Marchador and Campolina breeds manage the donor mares in the client’s Ranch. The most of those Ranches own their recipients and all the procedure is realized there. In the QH, PH, Jumping breeds the most of donor mares, are shipped to breeding center to be managed. We are working on both type of management.

We are 3 vets, involved on the service. We own our breeding center, localized in the family Ranch owned, and we take care of 16 more different Ranches. Our routine includes: palpations, inseminations, collection of semen to ship or fresh use, flushing mares and transferring embryos. In all of those places, we work in an every other day schedule. In small ranches, where we have a more malleable schedule, the visit is not so frequent. On those Ranches we flush some mares, but the most of then will finish the year pregnant.

We manage some popular QH stallions and around 200 doses of semen are shipped every month from August to February. We also received about 40 % from the semen we to use to inseminate the mares. We have to work every day, even Sundays and holidays from august to February. It happens, with the most of vets involved with equine reproduction in Brazil. In our practice, we still were not able to change that, to provide us at least one day off every week.
The Breeding Center routine: We worked at our Breeding Center with about 120 client mares and 15 owned by the Ranch. About 35 of them finished the breeding season carrying your own baby, some after were flushed to produce ET pregnancies. [...]