Pioneering methods in equine reproduction offer horse owners unprecedented control and flexibility

Want to show your mare and breed her, too? You can. Want to get foals from a stallion with low fertility? You can. Want to pass down your gelding’s DNA? You can.

You can also ship your mare’s eggs and get her fertilized embryos sent back to you. You can even store embryos for as long as you want and just pull them out of frozen storage whenever you’re ready to make a new foal.

This isn’t the future; this is the here and now of horse breeding. More than ever, owners have an amazing array of options that allow for both flexibility and breeding success. In this article we’ll take a closer look at what’s new in assisted equine reproduction and what that means for horses and humans.

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) involves injecting a single sperm into an egg, or oocyte, to provoke fertilization, producing an embryo that can then be transplanted into a recipient mare.

Physicians also use ICSI in human reproduction, but technique is especially critical for equine reproduction because standard in-vitro fertilization (IVF) has always been a challenge in horses, says Stuart Meyers, DVM, PhD, professor emeritus of anatomy, physiology, and cell biology at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine.

With ICSI a single ejaculate can produce hundreds of foals, says Andres Gambini, DVM, PhD, senior lecturer in the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability at The University of Queensland, in Gatton, Australia.

Even stallions with poor semen quality can reproduce via ICSI because a single sperm is sufficient, says Edward Squires, MS, PhD, Dipl. ACT, an independent consultant at Reproductive Management, in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Because practitioners need specialized equipment and “very high-tech labor” to perform ICSI, only about a dozen equine ICSI labs operate worldwide, says Meyers