Has anybody ever heard of the situation where a stallion as a young horse has good motility in his sperm (ie. as a 3/4yo) but later (at say 7/8) has zero motility. Have this situation in a recently purchased stallion with no "obvious" signs or reasons. Vet experts all say likely poisoning of sorts but no known cause or treatment. Anyone have any experience with this?
Kelly (63.172.47.208)
Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 - 09:34 pm:
Do you know if he has been seriously ill? A prolonged and high fever can also affect fertility.
Anonymous (146.178.26.8)
Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2002 - 05:59 pm:
No. The horse has been in the best of health it's whole life. It looks healthy and the sperm count is excellent - it just has no motility. We've been contacting breeding "experts" all around the world without luck. Some stud owners in Germany suggested that sedation of the horse can have this affect and that for the Auctions, many of the young horses are given hormones which can have a similar affect short term. In both instances, they believed this to be short lived problem however. With this horse, looking back over the breeding history, it may already have been running for 2 years. The owner was proned to used sedatives although he vehemently denies having done so on this one - the stallion is very very quiet and well behaved. Just interested if anyone has heard of anything similar? (PS. This horse is not in the US)
Karen (216.64.203.139)
Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2002 - 08:32 am:
Just a quick, off the wall question - is it POSSIBLE that the sperm is being killed during the collection and/or examination process? The reason I ask is I had a very similar situation with my stallion. He had passed a reproductive exam with flying colors just a few months earlier. And suddenly, there wasn't a moving sperm cell in the batch when we collected him. We tried changing liners, different lube, all kinds of things. To no avail. I was getting desperate. Then we finally figured out (by looking down into the AV immediately after collection and seeing a pool of semen sitting halfway down the AV) that the liner on the AV was "sticking" to itself, and trapping the semen in the heat of the water jacket for too long, killing them all dead as a doornail. We found out that if we lubricated the liner all the way down to the collection bottle, the liner remained open, the semen flowed quickly into the bottle, and our problem was solved literally overnight.
Another way to determine if the problem lies somewhere in the collection process is to breed this stallion live cover to a couple of mares. If they get in foal, that obviously means he has motility, and narrows down where the problem lies.
One other thought - if he spiked a fever (even for a short time that you didn't know about) it could result in a lot of dead sperm. Usually within 60 days that problem will be resolved, as new sperm will by then have developed and matured.
I'm sure you've already thought of these things, but I figured I'd toss in my two-cents' worth. Good luck to you, and let us know what happens.
Anonymous (146.178.26.8)
Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2002 - 07:55 pm:
Kelley, thanks for the thoughts. We had gone over all those things and the AV was the first spot we looked. The thing that made the owner very suspicious was that he had served 8 mares over a period of 8 weeks (some even had returned) and not one mare in foal - half of those were hand served not using the AV. That's when the tests began and the results were found....
Anonymous
Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 02:45 pm:
What should be included in a stallion fertility exam besides sperm count and progressive motility?? What information does the stallion swab and cytology give and how do you treat if there is cellular inflamation or an abnormal cytoloy results? I've had great luck in the past in getting even the hard-breeding mares pregnant, that is until the last two years. His sperm count is around 1.5 - 2 billion with normal motility and progressively motile sperm. I don't breed many mares and usually once per cycle. The mares are all in great health and have had a biopsy,culture and cytology. I have been using oxytocin, and infusing them after breeding, neither, any sooner than 4 hours post breeding. Any new thoughts would be appreciated!! Thanks
I don't know if seminal plasma can be so toxic that it causes a total lack of motility, but have you tried fractioning the ejaculate (to collect only the first 3 ejaculatory jets)? Or collecting into extender (to dilute the effect of the seminal plasma)?
What's the morphology of the collected sperm like?
Have you had the semen cultured? There is a possibility of there being an infection somewhere along the line.
Have you checked the pH of the semen?
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