Jennifer Mears lost Tuesday, her beloved buckskin mare, in the devastation caused by a deadly tornado that struck northern Colorado in May. But thanks to the quick thinking of doctors and researchers at Colorado State University and the help of her horse-loving neighbors, two mares are now pregnant with Tuesday’s offspring.

The horses are expected to give birth next spring, about a month before the anniversary of the May 22 tornado that killed a 52-year-old man and damaged over 800 houses.

Doctors at CSU removed Tuesday’s ovaries before she was euthanized, then staffers at the school’s equine reproduction laboratory quickly collected her eggs and injected them with sperm from a horse belonging to one of Mears’s neighbors the next morning.

Of the 20 fertilized eggs, eight developed into embryos and then-lab director Pat McCue took the four best ones and implanted them into four surrogate mares rounded up by family, friends, and CSU