Providing exercise as a prebreeding warm-up can even help prevent possible injuries during collection. | Photo: iStock

From breeding shed to show ring? Why not? Researchers recently confirmed that collecting semen from well-trained stallions does not have a negative effect on performance.

“The majority of stallions cope very well emotionally with parallel use in performance and breeding,” said Christine Aurich, DVM, PhD, head of the Graf Lehndorff Institute for Equine Science in Neustadt, Germany. “There are individual stallions that may be difficult; however, if they’re well-trained, it does not cause problems.”

Aurich; Stephanie Pasing, PhD, also of Graf Lehndorff; and colleagues studied stress parameters in 16 experienced breeding stallions used in an artificial insemination program. They looked at how the breeding process affects heart rate and salivary cortisol (commonly referred to as “the stress hormone”) levels