The thing - sorry about the quality of the picture but I took it!
Well a strange looking contraption arrived with the vet bearing the Lenard's frozen semen for Belle.
She was successfully ovuplanted at twelve o'clock at night whilst "sitting up" in bed and this gave our vet a tighter ovulation schedule to work with. He arrived at seven o'clock the next morning to scan Belle prior to ordering the semen.........and the next day too but this time it was D day. Belle was very relaxed for her morning scan as usual and the decision was made to inseminate at lunch time, as near to the active right ovary as possible .........after the second scan of the day to check for oedema in the womb.
The vet returned again at five o' clock for the third scan of the day and whoopee she had ovulated so he conducted the second and final insemination. Surrounded by discarded rubber gloves and cast off tail bandages we felt in need of a rest for sure but wait she would just need an anti rejection drug at 10.00 pm precisely and any thoughts of an early night went out of the window.
Belle had another scan the next day to check the health of her reproductive track with a wash out and a spot of anti biotic... plus two more dosed of something at 2.00pm and 9.00pm........or did that happen before - by this time the whole thing was starting to seem very complicated and more like a test tube foal. We had Sunday off from Belles Derriere but Monday - Monday the vet and his scanner were back again - i was fortunate that it was the guests Breakfast time and just left a newly washed tail bandage outside of her box as my contribution to the proceedings - i did pop out with a mug of tea and a croissant for the vet before neatly retreating back to the house.
Danni watched every move that the vet made but only showed any real stallion interest around the point of ovulation - now that is a clever horse!
Charles walking Belle around the outside yard after insemination - she had a busy day!
And no need to even remove the rug
Danni is now studiously ignoring Belle! So would we do it again? well it is quite a undertaking of time and effort and also it must be said our vet dedicated a large portion of his day (and great expertise) to the project. Just fourteen days until the next scan!
i hadn't realised there was so much involved with artificial insemination .. i think if i ever put my mare back in foal, i'll just send her to the stallion ....or is that as complicated?
ReplyDeleteHi Claire - it turned into three days of hard labour and if I'm honest total disruption to our daily routine. As Lenard was a german, imported, performance tested Holstein and is now deceased - we hope it will be worth it and if we should get a colt........ I wish, I wish but it is not somthing I would undertake lightly again! No natural covering is much easier but with scanning you can tighten up on the amount of effort to stallion, mare and humans by covering around ovulation - thus saying the vet remarked that Dani's semen would probably live five days. It really does go on - the washing out etc BUT Dani did a flying change yesterday!
ReplyDeletestallion it is then .. IF i do that ...got another 5 years before it would be too late for a non maiden mare!
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