Breeding Management of the Performance Mare

Since the first pregnancy was achieved with frozen thawed‐semen more than half a century ago, the use of cryopreserved semen in the equine industry has increased steadily. Today, thousands of mares are bred an a yearly basis with frozen semen and hundreds of stallions are collected and their semen frozen to be shipped around the world. Most breed associations accept the use of frozen semen but certainly it is used with higher prevalence in the sport horse industry (dressage and jumpers). Due to the nature the sport horse industry there are several scenarios in which mares are bred. Sport horse mares are not ready to start their intended use until they are at least 3 or 4 years of age. However they have reached puberty after the age of 2. Therefore it is quite common to either never breed the mare after the show career is over or to bred her at the age of 2 so that she foals at three and starts work at 4. These mares start their training and show career at the age of 4 and often continue until the age of 10 or older as mare that had only one foal as a 3 year old or oftentimes as maiden mare. This type of mare is considered as the old maiden mare. The other group of mares are those mares that continue their show career but produce offspring by embryo transfer. Each of these groups poses different challenges to the veterinarian. The objective of this paper is to describe the challenges and breeding management strategies that are available when veterinarians need to use frozen semen on old maiden mares or mares that are still showing and have a limited availability or breeding. […]