how many collect their stallion?

[LynnG]

how many collect their stallion?

what kind of extender do you finds works good?

[Carol Nelson]

When we first started collecting Red, we used a gentamicin antibiotic based extender. However, we found that one mare reacted to the extender and would not take. That is when we opted to use no extender and just dump the whole works into the mare. That was when we were paying to have it done, not doing it ourselves, and cost was an issue. We've divided an ejaculate in two with no extender and got both mares in foal...have done that a couple of times. Red doesn't produce a large volume of semen but his is very potent.
I, myself, if you are just starting out, would recommend a milk based extender, particularly if you are shipping. I believe a mare would be a lot less apt to react to that as opposed to the gentamicin or other antibiotic based extender. Granted, the antibiotic would battle any latent bacteria, but if a client is paying for shipped semen, they aren't going to be happy if their mare reacts to the extender.
If the mare is on premises, you don't need it.
Best thing to do to check your semen's motility in an extender is to run a test collection, divide the specimen, and add the respective extenders and set it aside in your incubator for a bit, then check it under the microscope. See what the motility is for each...if it changes at all. Some stallions ship better with different extenders.
I have some in the freezer in the barn...if you like, I can check and see what it is and who makes it. I don't remember off hand.

[PattiB]

When I was at La Villa Ventura I would collect Apache de Ventura for shipping or breeding on premise. We had a breeding dummy where the AV installed in the end. It made it real easy for me to collect him by myself. He would breed the dummy after he dismounted (which was funny to watch, he never got the hang of that), I pulled the lever flipped that end of the dummy up, while I put him in a stall it drained down into the collection bottle, I unhooked the AV, drained the water, took the bottle to the labroom and extended it and put it in an Equitainer.

We used an extender with antibiotics. We also had a semen counter that made it real easy to figure the dilution ratio of semen to extender. Put .01cc of semen in a tube of formaldyhyde drop it in the counter and in just seconds it would give you the count for that sample. We did use a microscope to evaluate motilty but the counter was much easier than trying to count the number of sperm in the grid(the old fashion way). :lol:

I recently had cultures, sperm count, etc. done on Damasco del Ocho and Saladin de Alexandra. I paid extra for the vets to see which extender worked best with their semen and both stallions worked best with different extenders. They put semen in each extender, cooled it, put it overnight in an equitainer and then tested it at different times for comparison.

Given the choice, I would prefer to have the mare on site at collection and just give her the entire collection as soon as possible with no extender, but that's not usually the way it happens. I don't personally collect my stallions and let the vets "handle" the job :lol:

[LynnG]

I used extenders 2 years ago without any antibiotics (Inra). Last year I tried about 4 different extenders with different antibiotics. The CST amikacin extender worked well for longivity for chilled semen. Most of the others did okay for the 2 day period I would be using it in.

[Candice Burger]

I managed a mare that could not accept extenders of any sort. Fortunately the donor stallion had acceptable numbers, volume, and life span to ship without extenders. Might still want to consider that when you run across mares that react to any extender out there.