PROCEDURE

The procedure involves inseminating the natural mother with fresh, chilled or frozen semen of a stallion of choice around the time of ovulation to create an embryo. At 8 days old this embryo is non-surgically flushed out of the donor uterus and placed into a suitable surrogate (recipient) mare, which carries the pregnancy to full term. This allows the mare to continue competing and/or undergo further inseminations if desired. In fact the mare can compete throughout every stage of embryo transfer providing geography allows.

RECIPIENT MARES                                                                                    

• You can use your own recipient mares, if suitable, or rent from Beaufort Embryo Transfer. The more recipient mares you provide us with for each desired embryo, the more likely we are to be able to synchronise your donor with one of your recipients. We usually find a ratio of 3 recipients to 1 donor embryo ensures successful synchronisation.

• Recipients should have a clean reproductive history and are usually aged between 5 and 12 years. We do use maiden mares and although the birth weights of their foals are often lower, due to their milk producing abilities, the foals have generally caught up by weaning.

• Recipients come in all shapes and sizes, the more common the better! Native mares are hardier, more fertile, produce better milk and generally make the best mothers.

• It is important that your donor and recipient are a similar height, although breadth does make up for a small amount of height!

• We often re-home suitable mares as recipients whose career has been cut short for any reason.

• Established in 2002, Beaufort Embryo Transfer has proved to be an undisputed success.
• There were 17 donor mares involved in the first year. A total of 44 flushings resulted in 33 viable embryos that were transferred into surrogate mares.
• To date Beaufort Embryo Transfer has produced over 300 embryo pregnancies.
• Our current recovery rate is 70%
• Our current pregnancy rate at 14 days is 78%
• The above figures are some of the highest reported for non-surgical Embryo Transfers in horses.
• One donor mare came to Beaufort Embryo Transfer for a period of 5 weeks and underwent 2 flushings, which produced 4 embryos. 4 live foals resulted, 3 of which were from embryos obtained from the same flushing, giving Britain the first reported set of Embryo Transfer triplets!