Pick the Sex of Your Foal

Pick the Sex of Your Foal

Susan Allen
Susan Allen

 

In the ranch horse business geldings bring top dollar, so imagine what it would mean if breeders could pick the sex of their foals. Open Range will be back after the break. Commencing in the 2010 breeding season horse breeders can   have stallion semen commercially sorted allowing them to pick the sex of their foals. Will this be good for the industry? My initial thought was that it would disrupt the  natural balance but  those advocating the use of sexed semen believe that it wouldn’t have much impact as breeders breed for their unique  markets, in some segments of the industry, like roping,  colts fetch  top dollar. Others disciplines want fillies and in many like eventing or dressage it’s personal preference.  The ability of breeders to select the sex of the foal might actually mean less unwanted horses because they could produce   more marketable foal crops. It would also be easier to market stallion breedings  if you could predict the sex and  there is the fact that  some bloodlines simply produce better stallions,  other lines better mares. Because the stallion determines the sex of the foal researchers at Sexing Technologies discovered it was fairly simple given  the proper sperm cell to pix the sex. So Sexing Technologies and Equine Reproduction Innovations teamed up to offer this process commercially using an innovative machine that sorts sperm cells, and they guaranteeing a   95 percent success rate. I still worry about  implications of this technology not only for horses but  humans. I’m Susan Allen
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