Friday, September 4, 2015

Pain In The Butt

Okay...so first the bad news...

My gray Tiny Watch mare is not bred. :-(

Dang it!!

Well, I've got plan B and plan C to fall back on. Plan B is embryo transfer. It's going to cost an additional $3500 to make that happen next spring. Plan C is scraping the idea I will get a foal out of the gray TW mare and simply substituting the brown TW mare in her place. Man, I hate the idea of Plan C, but I WILL get me a Tiny Watch/Letta Hank Do It foal!!!

Interestingly enough, I actually have someone else who would very much like to have an embryo out of the gray mare, but sired by her young...and as yet unproven...son of Frenchman's Guy. This young stud is out of a daughter of Dash Ta Fame, with a Mito Paint/Three O's tail line. Truth of the matter is...I wouldn't mind having a foal by that stallion myself. You just cannot seem to go wrong when you cross the Tiny Watch blood onto the Frenchman's Guy blood. I was a little bit leery of the Dash Ta Fame blood, but this horse doesn't seem to have the quirky nature that some of the DTF's are noted for and should be a safe cross. Once I knew I would be looking at ETing next year anyway, I let her know that the possibility of her also getting an ET was available sooner than I had originally thought. She is thinking about it and discussing it with her SO. I told her not to worry. We have months until any decisions have to be made.

I won't charge her for the embryo (she'll be paying all of her own costs to make that happen), but I will probably ask her if I can get a free breeding to the FG stud for my brown TW mare. I was wanting to cross the brown mare onto a FG stallion anyway. I had picked out Frenchman's Fabulous...but this younger stud has just as good of bloodlines as FF. He's just not 'known' yet. I don't mind getting in on the ground floor with a younger stallion when the genetics are comparable. And getting a free breed for the brown mare will certainly help me out financially. My whole breeding budget will be swallowed up on my own ET and I simply cannot afford to let the brown TW mare sit open for another year.

I guess if this lady decides against the embryo transfer, I will simply have to breed both Frenchie and the brown TW mare to our ranch stud. It's not a 'worst case' scenario, I actually would like to see what that would produce, but there is going to be a complete and total lack of 'color' possibility and not even any 'chrome' to liven things up a bit. Hey...Not that I seem to be able to get any 'color' anyway. LOL.

Of course, the gray mare being open presents another problem too. I will probably have to leave Beretta open another year, but that isn't a huge deal to me. She is the youngest of my broodmares, so time is not a factor with her like it is with these older broodies. I know the owner of Firewater Fooler will be sad to hear I am not breeding her back right away, but eventually she will get bred back to FF. I mean, Ruger is just too nice of a colt to not want to make more of.

And while all of this stuff is rattling around in my head...All I can think is...Thank God Sassy is bred!! If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have ANY babies to look forward to next spring. Sassy has assured Cindy D. on numerous occasions that she is in fact, baking the perfect palomino filly. ;-). LOL

7 comments:

Shirley said...

Sounds like a good plan, hope the lady goes for it.
When you do an ET, how does that work? Get the embryo started in the gray mare and transfer it to another mare? Which mare would you use for the recipient?

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

Yes Shirley, the donor mare (the mare who's foal you want) is AIed and the embryo is left in her for about 2 weeks. Then the embryo is collected and placed in the uterus of an ovulating 'recipient' mare.

In this case, the reproductive facility breeds/collects and then cools the embryo (the same way semen is cooled) and delivers it to Colorado State University, who then places it in a recip mare. CSU runs a 100 head recip herd and by utilizing them, the reproductive facility in my area has had a 100% success rate for the last couple of years.

Initially, I had hoped to use one of my own mares, either Beretta or Belle, but the hardest part of ETing is having a recip mare that is in the correct place in her ovulation to accept the embryo. The odds of success are greatly reduced when you are trying to sinc mares so they are ready to accept the embryo, so I gave up the idea of using one of my own mares without a fuss. I'll take the 100% track record and just lease whatever mare CSU successfully lands the embryo in. :-)

Anonymous said...

So you'd breed her once to Letta Hank Do It, transfer the embryo and then a second round to the other stud?

Do they treat the donor mare at all to ovulate multiple eggs? Or is that just too problematic? I vaguely remember in college watching them do ET on some of the beef cattle and they got multiple embryos out of the donors. But that was way too long ago.

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

According to what I have read, even with hormonal treatments, it is very unlikely to get a mare to produce more than 2 healthy eggs at a time. They just aren't geared to drop numerous eggs and you can't trick them into it like you can with other species. I don't know much more about it than that, but I do know that the embryos are pulled quick enough that, 'normally' the mares continue to cycle right on schedule.

In this case, due to the other gal being in AZ and requiring a much earlier foaling date than I do, we would actually inseminate Miss with her stallion's semen first, pull that embryo for transfer, then the next time around, we would inseminate her to LHDI and pull that embryo.

Anonymous said...

Good luck! I love listening to how much you know about bloodlines and breeding.

Crystal said...

Should be interesting. Good to have a plan, kinda sucks shes not bred, but thats the breeding game I guess. At least there is Sassy :)

Sherry Sikstrom said...

good to have a plan , but ya know if you want color... lol