Hormones and Mare Conception Rates

Treatment with equine follicle-stimulating hormone (eFSH) does not increase healthy mares’ conception rates, researchers recently reported.

The hormone eFSH is used to stimulate donor mares’ ovaries to increase the number of

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Treatment with equine follicle-stimulating hormone (eFSH) did not increase healthy mares’ conception rates in a new study, researchers recently reported.

The hormone eFSH is used to stimulate donor mares’ ovaries to increase the number of ovulations and resulting embryos in one cycle, but some breeders also want to use it to enhance fertility of healthy mares that are going to carry to term, explained Tal Raz, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACT, formerly of the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine, now in Israel at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine.

Researchers compared two groups of healthy mares intended to carry foals to term. One group received eFSH and one did not. The eFSH mares received the hormone for a few days and were artificially inseminated with fresh semen collected from a fertile stallion after they came into heat. The other mares were bred when they naturally came into heat.

The researchers used ultrasound to examine the mares for pregnancy. Mares treated with eFSH developed more follicles and had twice as many ovulations than the other mares, but eFSH did not increase the chances for pregnancy–50% of the eFSH mares and 62% of the untreated mares conceived

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