In 1988, cousins Mike and Richard Giacopuzzi opened Humphrey, Giacopuzzi and Associates Equine Hospital (HGAEH) to provide high quality medicine and surgery to the horses of Ventura County, California. It soon became apparent that there existed a void in reproductive services, especially with respect to assisted reproductive techniques. In response, Dr. Richard transformed the then seldom used HGAEH farrier shop into what is now the clinic’s Equine Reproductive Center.
Dr. Richard, a 1979 U.C. Davis graduate, began a focus on breeding mares in-house with shipped/cooled semen and developed HGAEH’s “Breeding Packages.” These all-inclusive packages allowed mare owners to drop their mares off at HGAEH for breeding at a fixed cost. The package program soon expanded to include the frozen semen industry as well. To date, client demand for in-house frozen semen packages significantly outnumbers that of the cooled/shipped packages. These package programs have allowed the hospital to obtain optimum results at a competitive price.
Reproductive services at HGAEH extend to field services for mares. HGAEH serves ranches large and small providing equine reproductive services to a diverse population of breeds including Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods, Quarter Horses and Spanish Horses. In conjunction with our Embryo Transfer director Dr. April Armstrong, ET services are provided with a limited on-site recipient herd and access to a large recipient herd within a few hours away (available for shipment of embryos).
The clinic also offers a full array of stallion services, including the collection, processing and shipping of fresh cooled semen. A typical breeding season finds HGAEH staff collecting 40-50 different stallions for shipment. In 2004, we developed a semen cryopreservation program that has grown exponentially. Our Legacy Package, introduced in 2010, includes the collection/freezing of 30 doses of semen AND the castration of the stallion at the end of the process. This has been extremely popular with sport horse owners wishing to geld high performing stallions without losing the possibility of future breeding.
In 2014, HGAEH became a Select Breeders Services (SBS) affiliate lab. This has taken our stallion services to a new level with respect to quality and service. By combining SBS protocols and proprietary formulas, with an upgrade in equipment, HGAEH now offers semen cryopreservation at a state of the art level. This improvement in quality crosses into our cooled/shipped and fresh semen services with updated techniques in semen handling and sanitation protocols. "We at HGAEH are proud to be a new part of the SBS team and look forward to our future partnerships with them!"
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