In recent issues of the SBS monthly newsletter we presented a couple of blog articles about reproductive efficiency, titled Measuring Reproductive Efficiency and A Review of Reports of Reproductive Efficiency. At SBS we ship out 1000s of frozen semen shipments a year, however, it is very difficult for us to get the pregnancy data back from the mare owners we send semen to. In the future we hope to simplify this process by enabling our clients to respond to an automatically generated email through our website. This would be great information to have available for review by mare owners considering frozen semen. We do track fertility data for the mares and stallions we manage at our SBS affiliate locations and we try to combine this data as a group for analysis. We summarize this information for you here.
This data represents mares of all ages and breeds managed with shipped-in cooled or frozen semen by several affiliate locations in North America and Europe as well as mares managed at home farms or other clinics that were inseminated with semen collected and shipped by SBS. The data for frozen semen included both SBS and non-SBS frozen semen and mares were managed utilizing single or multiple doses per breeding cycle.
• For 2012 - The first cycle pregnancy rate was 63% for cooled semen (406 mares) and 53% for frozen semen (405 mares). The overall pregnancy rate was 75% for cooled semen and 69% for frozen semen.
• For 2010 to 2012 combined - The first cycle pregnancy rate was 59% for cooled semen (1549 mares) and 51% for frozen semen (1313 mares). The overall pregnancy rate was 75% for cooled semen and 69% for frozen semen.
This data correlates well with a previous report published by Paul Loomis (2001) of data collected during the 1999 and 2000 breeding seasons where the first cycle pregnancy rate for cooled (850 mares) and frozen (876 mares) semen was 59% and 51% respectively. In this study seasonal pregnancy rate was 75% and 76% respectively for cooled and frozen semen.
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