VETERINARY surgeon and organiser of the Irish Equine Reproductive Symposium, Niamh Lewis, gave two short presentations on the second day of last weekend’s conference. The opening day of the conference was aimed at veterinarians, while the second day was for sport horse breeders.

Lewis followed on from some of the discussions which took place on the first day and raised a number of interesting, and at times, challenging questions to the audience of breeders.

In her first presentation, Lewis asked whether using one straw of frozen semen is enough. She noted how when she asked the same question to the audience of veterinary surgeons the day before that it raised a lot of debate.

In order to answer the question, Lewis broke down some of the numbers. Two of the most important figures were that it is recommended to use over 250 million progressively motile sperm and that sperm like to be in a concentration of between 100 and 200 million per straw.

She highlighted that the quality of the sperm per straw can vary widely but she works off the assumption that there is between 20% and 30% progressive motile sperm in each straw.

Lewis noted the need to maximise the use of semen and greater profit as the main reasons for using a low dose of semen. She said that every stallion has a magic number of how much semen is required and that case selection is key.

She closed the presentation by asking the audience whether it is now time to regulate the quality of frozen semen and whether is it also time to look at the impact of medication used on stallions, especially during their competition career and how this may impact on their breeding career.

Lewis gave a second presentation in the afternoon sesson which was titled ‘Breeding champions with epigenetics in mind.’

(The epigenetics session is covered in the Horse Sense pages on 96-97).