FlyinDoveHorses - 2015-06-09 1:36 PM As a Equine Repro. specialist, and a stallion/mare owner I will tell you that it is not uncommon for quality to go down.... Here are reasons as to why; 1. Improper collection, cooling, cryo(freezing), shipping, etc. 2. Improper handling from Repro. specialist(this could be a vet or specialist) 3. Over collecting 4. Improper nutrition on either animals 5. Mare can have issues I will say this... My young stallion I am breeding this year is his first time.. We started a month prior to breeding dates with clients to collect him and train him on the dummie... He knew his job not a problem, however, he had to go through this process to be "cleaned out" , if you will, to rid the organs of dead sperm. However, he started at 40% motility, with a concentration of 400... This means 40% of the population was viable however normal concentration of semen is up to 300, and good ideal motility rates are 60-70. During this time I had a broodmare come in and decided to go ahead and use it..... This essentially was straight from collection to mare.... she is pregnant and she wasn't ideal due to some issues with the bakery... We collected him a couple of times more and by the end of things he now maintains a 70-80% motility even with frozen, and 600 concentration. Very high for a stallion. The key for this is nutrition being optimal and giving higher protein. So when mare owners contact me I let them know up front and educate them to the in depth understanding of what goes on...A lot of my mare owners will come here because they can get it all done in house... However, I have sent a good bit of frozen semen around the US with the various stallions we have here... I would not be offended if a mare owner called saying they have 40% motility, especially because we shipped the lab results with the semen... there is also a clause in the contract that if for some reason the motility they receive is different than what is shipped that by them signing and us, we the stallion owners are not liable. However, we also do a LFG that cost more, but we ship semen (3) times for the same mare until the VET confirms a pregnancy, and reasoning as to why there is not a pregnancy prior to sending semen for any additional shipments. This usually cost $1,000.00. In my experience there are plenty of mares that can conceive with 40% motility. Everyone does things different so I can't say on the stallion owners side, but if there's 40%, and they don't have anything listed above, there's no reason expect poor semen and handling then I would send ...

sam.kappen - 2015-06-09 1:13 PM Im not here to argue with you Wings my question was how to handle this. I never once stated the stallion owner or blasted your name off. I would have never choosen the stallion had I thought it wouldnt of made a good cross on my mare.  You are the one that came on and started throwing names out noone would have ever known who I was talking about had you not outed yourself. Im sorry that is how  you took things or felt you had to handle this. When a call was made to you intiaily to get you insight and your thoughts on things.