Reproductive technology

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I have just returned from a recent trip down through Texas to visit some veterinary clinics and attend the Superstakes Cutting Horse Event in Fort Worth. During the flight down, I was reminiscing about the changes that have occurred during my 30-year career as an academician. You really feel old when you can remember the days before we had cell phones, laptop computers, Internet, fax machines, and iPods. Life was a little simpler back in those days. Now, every time I travel, I have a laptop with a wireless card plus a cell phone, which allows me to stay in contact with the office no matter where I travel.

Tremendous changes have also occurred in how we breed mares. When you visit a reproductive center in this day and age, the veterinary clinic is usually packed with Equitainers and other cooling boxes that are used for shipping semen, as well as many nitrogen tanks that contain hundreds of thousands of frozen sperm. Spending time in the Cutting Horse industry, you also wonder if anyone ever breeds a mare and lets her carry the foal to term. There are numerous large embryo recipient stations just in the state of Texas. Veterinarians spend a good portion of their day either flushing embryos out of mares or transferring them into recipients. Embryo transfer has certainly become old hat. At one time, we thought embryo transfer was high technology. Now we have not only cooled embryos, but also frozen embryos, deep-horn insemination, oocyte transfer, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and even cloning.

None of these techniques has created quite as much stir as the development of cloning techniques. Several clones have been born this spring, and many more are likely to come in 2007. People seem to be either quite enthusiastic about cloning or adamantly opposed to it. Those who are enthused about the technique recognize it as a method of preserving genetic material and providing a replacement for their great mare or stallion. Only time will tell whether clients will be pleased with their investment. Others have the opinion that cloning is “going too far” and that we should be able to create a better horse in the future without having to clone the ones that are here now.

It is interesting to contemplate: with all of the developments in reproductive techniques that have occurred in the last 30 years, what do the next 30 years hold? More than likely, there will be bright scientists and veterinarians who will develop new and better ways of breeding horses in the future.