Established in 1986 as the Horse Bloodtyping Laboratory, the University of Kentucky Animal Genetic Testing and Research Lab (AGTRL) offers a number of testing services of value to practitioners, horse owners, and breed registries.

After being housed in the Dimock Animal Pathology Building for 23 years, the program relocated to the Gluck Equine Research Center in 2009.

Until the 1990s, blood typing was the identification method of choice for the cattle and equine industries. Unlike the human A, B, O blood-type system, horse red cell types are more complicated and, therefore, more informative than human blood typing. Horse blood types are not only useful for donor/recipient cross-matching, but could function as an identification system and method to confirm parentage of foals. Because reagents (substances used to detect/measure other substances by means of the reactions they cause, in this case processed serum from horses that have been immunized to develop antibodies to specific red cell factors) to detect the more than 20 red cell factors in horses are not commercially available, the lab previously maintained a large group of horses at the Department of Veterinary Science farm facilities to perform its own immunizations for reagent production. Red cell typing is only one component of generating a horse blood type, and scientists used genetic differences in red cell and serum proteins to compile a profile of 17 genetic systems per animal. Three different laboratories were required to house the equipment and personnel needed to process about 200 samples per day.

Beginning in the early 1990s, DNA-based technology became available for identification purposes in humans and animals. Microsatellites, which are segments of DNA containing simple nucleotide repeats of varying sizes, became the standard for equine identification and parentage. While only slightly more accurate than blood typing, the great advantage of DNA testing is it can be done using hair samples from the mane or tail. This eliminates the need for perishable blood samples that often had to be collected by a veterinarian. Now owners can send their horses’ hairs by mail for DNA sampling