Equine Breeding Techniques

If you're considering breeding your mare you have three options, send your mare away for natural stud servicing, send your mare away for artificial insemination, or keep your mare at home and use chilled/frozen semen for artificial insemination.  In any case, prior to breeding your mare the first thing you'll want to do is have your mare examined to see if she is able to be bred, and then decide which type of stallion would be best for your breeding purposes.  After these decisions are made, it's time to decide whether you're going to use a stud service or AI (Artificial Insemination).  

AI is a more costly route, but there are advantages to it.  The first one being, you have a larger gene pool to choose from; a couple other advantages are there's less risk to your mare of getting infections or being hurt during the stud servicing.

AI in horses is a fairly simple procedure, but the most important thing is to ensure cleanliness throughout the procedure.  AI in horses is done through the vagina.  Your first step is preparing the perinea area, making sure it is clean and that the tail is tied off to one side to avoid contamination.  After the mare is prepped, it's time to retrieve the semen from the storage container through the insemination pipette into the syringe.  The next step is placing the inseminator's gloved arm into the mare's vagina, palpating the cervix, and using his index finger to open the cervix to enable him to insert the pipette into the uterus as far as he can.  Once the pipette is inserted properly, he depresses the plunger to release the semen.  Then the inseminator slowly removes his arm from the vagina.