Technology is an amazing thing–especially technology that allows veterinarians to produce live foals from horses with very poor fertility and even from those that have died. A number of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for horses have been optimized for commercial use, and veterinarians discussed these in detail during the 2010 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention, held Dec. 4-8 in Baltimore, Md.

"For the equine practitioner, application of ART can range from simply sending ovaries to a laboratory after a mare's untimely death to setting up complete oocyte and embryo culture systems in a practice," began Katrin Hinrichs, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACT, professor of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology and Patsy Link Chair in Mare Reproductive Studies at Texas A&M University. She discussed several ART methods and techniques as follows.

Postmortem Shipment of Ovaries

If a mare dies but the owner still would like foals from her, her ovaries can be harvested immediately and oocytes (egg cells) from them can be matured in the laboratory, then placed in a recipient mare for fertilization and gestation (more on oocyte transfer in a moment). Alternatively, those matured oocytes can be fertilized in the lab (using intracytoplasmic sperm injection, ICSI, or injecting a sperm cell directly into the egg; more on this in a moment). The fertilized eggs are cultured in the lab and resulting embryos can be placed in recipient mares for gestation