Artificial Insemination Question

[SaraB]

Originally Posted by Shai

Yeah the pup I'm bringing home next month was born from semen frozen in the 90s...good repro vets are key. SaraB, the vet they used is in the Twin Cities area IIRC.

And agree w/ regard to carrier service. We shipped in cooled semen from all over for the horses and had good success as long as the vet was on top of monitoring ovulation, etc., and the semen was handled well. Shipping in extreme weather conditions never seemed to work as well but whether the extreme weather was affecting the mare, the semen, or both...

Ya, we have one of the best repo vets around. Classic's breeder uses them a lot and so do a lot of Dane breeders.

[MafiaPrincess]

Agree with Shai. I've read too many AI horse nightmares, vet asking for semen, semen being shipped badly, semen not viable in the end. Poor repo vets asking for semen at inappropriate times..

Research a great repo vet, not all are equal.

[Romy]

If it's coming from Australia, it should be frozen and you should budget for surgical AI and progesterone testing. Kaia's repro vet mentioned that all of the frozen semen she's handled from Oz has always had a viability of over 60%, and said that their collection and storage facilities must be really top notch compared to some of storage places here in the states.

Kaia's breeder did a litter with imported semen from australia recently, and they got 10 puppies out of it. That was surgical ai too, using an older bitch and with old semen.

[SaraB]

Originally Posted by Romy

If it's coming from Australia, it should be frozen and you should budget for surgical AI and progesterone testing. Kaia's repro vet mentioned that all of the frozen semen she's handled from Oz has always had a viability of over 60%, and said that their collection and storage facilities must be really top notch compared to some of storage places here in the states.

Kaia's breeder did a litter with imported semen from australia recently, and they got 10 puppies out of it. That was surgical ai too, using an older bitch and with old semen.

Wooooo! I'm just excited it's a possibility. I haven't looked into it at all because obviously all breeding plans are YEARS away, but I have been asked a few times if we are going to import semen since there are so few studs in the states.

[Shai]

Originally Posted by SaraB

Wooooo! I'm just excited it's a possibility. I haven't looked into it at all because obviously all breeding plans are YEARS away, but I have been asked a few times if we are going to import semen since there are so few studs in the states.

Definitely allows for much broader options...

[Aleron]

I agree with Romy about surgical for frozen, needing a good repro vet and going with frozen if it's being shipped from far away. I have known a lot of non-surgical frozen semen AIs to fail and those were done by the leading canine repro vet in..well, pretty much the whole world. The surgicals I've known seem to produce puppies pretty consistently though.

[Lyzelle]

Why is surgery required for AI in dogs? Also, is there no sure-fire way to KNOW that the bitch is ovulating consistently with decent follicles? Jesus. Exactly how primitive IS dog breeding?

Generally speaking, freezing/cooling and shipping semen shouldn't be all that hard. At all.

[BostonBanker]

Shoot, horse semen goes all over the globe. I spent two summer doing collections/processing/shipping several times a week with fresh cooled, dealt with frozen for my senior research project in college, and have seen lots of horses inseminated artificially with both frozen and fresh. While it is still required to do live coverings for Jockey Club, I'd be shocked if many were doing live with warmbloods. AI is sort of the norm at this point.

Now granted, I know far less about impregnating a dog, but unless it is 100x more complicated than with horses, I wouldn't think it would be all that difficult. I'd actually have guessed it was easier - don't dogs ovulate multiple times over a period of time? That was my understanding behind the multiple father litters. The tough part with frozen on a mare is that the frozen semen, once thawed, generally lives a fair bit less time than fresh cooled, so you have to make sure it is in there at the right time, rather than having the larger window fresh gives you.

That could be the most useless information ever if dogs don't get pregnant the way I think they do. Ah well. It is typed out.

[Shai]

Originally Posted by Lyzelle

Why is surgery required for AI in dogs? Also, is there no sure-fire way to KNOW that the bitch is ovulating consistently with decent follicles? Jesus. Exactly how primitive IS dog breeding?

Generally speaking, freezing/cooling and shipping semen shouldn't be all that hard. At all.

My understanding is that with dogs the mechanics of the tie in a live cover breeding also helps move the sperm into the uterus where it fertilizes the eggs. In an AI breeding there is no tie obviously, so that mechanism is somewhat compromised. In addition frozen sperm has pretty short life once thawed so the timetable to get it to the uterus before it's no longer viable is truncated...to get around that they do the surgery to deposit the frozen/thawed sperm directly in the uterus.

For side-by-side AIs, breeders may collect from the male and deposit directly into the female's vaginal opening and simulate a tie...a person I know did that method because she has a breed for whom natural breeding is difficult. Right or wrong that's another way to go about it, but it's apparently less effective even with fresh sperm.

Not a repro vet and much more experienced with horse AI than dogs so take that as you will.

[CharlieDog]

Originally Posted by Shai

Yeah the pup I'm bringing home next month was born from semen frozen in the 90s...good repro vets are key. SaraB, the vet they used is in the Twin Cities area IIRC.

And agree w/ regard to carrier service. We shipped in cooled semen from all over for the horses and had good success as long as the vet was on top of monitoring ovulation, etc., and the semen was handled well. Shipping in extreme weather conditions never seemed to work as well but whether the extreme weather was affecting the mare, the semen, or both...

Um, WHAT?