Breedings to Deceased Stallions Offered Via Injection Technique

A reproductive technique called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), in which a sperm cell is injected directly into an egg, has resulted in foals from many mares that were no longer able to produce. However, it might be equally as important in reviving valuable genetics from stallions that have been dead for decades.

The ability to freeze semen on stallions has been available for many decades. However, it is by no means an exact science. Unlike bull semen, which has quite consistent quality when frozen, the success of freezing stallions’ semen is very dependent on the individual stallion. For reasons that are still not fully understood, many stallions do no freeze well, even if they have good fertility with chilled or raw semen.

Regardless, over the past several decades, many owners have chosen to freeze their stallions’ semen. If it froze well, they were ahead of the game. If the stallion did not freeze well, the semen was still often kept in the hope that the technology of the future would enable them to utilize the semen.