Episode 16 - Inside Solo Select’s 2,500-Mare Recipient Mare Operation: Secrets to Better Pregnancy Rates

Hi, everyone. This is Melanie Smith with Solo Select. Today, I'm here with Kim, who is the manager of our ReSip farm. Kim's been with us for this is our second breeding season together. So just a little bit of history on our ReSip farm and what a ReSip farm is. So if you're not involved in the breeding... You've heard the term re-sip, surrogate mares. What you want to think of is we are transferring embryos from what we call donor mares, and that happens whether it's via a flush, an ICSI. These can be frozen embryos, embryos that we have gotten days to years ago that are frozen, and we will thaw and put into these re-sips, and those go into mares that are essentially surrogate mares. They're carrying an embryo that comes from a donor mare, and we've got a herd here at Sola Select of about 2,500 of those recent mares, and we're going to talk more in this podcast about why we have so many of those mares and why that's such an advantage for our customers, how we take care of that many mares, how we manage a herd.

What we do to make sure the outcome for our customers is successful, all the way from the first positive preg check to foaling to weaning. It's a very comprehensive program here at SoloSelect that requires a lot of expertise from multiple people within our organization that understand everything from getting these embryos and making sure that we have the best quality embryos to be able to transfer all the way to the people that fall out and make sure that these falls have every chance possible to be healthy and to be winners down the road. And Kim is here today. What we're really going to hone in on today is the actual recipient mare process. And I want to say that starts at transfer, but one thing we're going to talk about today is how that really and truly starts long before we transfer the embryo into that ReSip and then goes all the way through the management of getting that mare from the ReSip farm to what is still is like north right now to full out or headed home.

Kim, let's talk a little bit before we get started here about your background and what you've done and how that led you to Solo Select. Been obsessed with reproduction since I've been around horses and for the past 12 years that is what my main focus has been and I've been just very infatuated with the recipes and being able to just manage those things where they're taking a foreign object and they're growing it and it's such a fantastic concept when you really look at it as a whole and so that's something I've just always been obsessed with. And I did my own thing, ran my own ranch and my own breeding deal. You've tried to hire me a couple of times. I have. And I just wasn't really ready. And then the last time it came to me, I said, let's try it.

Yeah. And I've been happy ever since. Yeah. I started out falling out and then I just progressed from there, starting breeding mares, flushing, and then taught myself how to palpate and went to work for Viagin, transferring embryos for them, thawing embryos, managing their re-sip herd. And then it's just progressed from there. And so, yes, I've known Kim for a long time and I've tried to hire her for years. And I always say everything happens for a reason. And I feel like it was just time for both of us. It was the perfect time. You were ready to do something. We needed somebody like you to come in and manage the ReSip farm. And so tell us a little bit about what your day to day is right now.

So right now in the mornings, management is key with what we do there. Organization is something that makes our entire ranch run and function. So when I get there in the mornings, I make all my lists for each pin just so that we can keep it organized. Everybody knows what that mare is in for, what the plan is, what she's had going on, where she is in her cycle, where it is just, bam, we are organizing. Everybody knows what's going on. So at the start of the day, we know exactly how many mares we need to set up that day. What our end goal is for, how many preg checks we have, how many progesterones we need to pull, because that's so important for us as a whole. So we have an initial plan when I get there in the mornings.

We know exactly by the time we start sorting our first pen, everybody knows what we need to do for that day, what our end goal is. So we start with the first pen and then we just start checking them. At the end of every pen, I take my sheets and I go sit down and I just go through and make sure that everything was entered correctly, that anything that needs to be updated gets pushed to the right person, all the little things that make that place just flow. We talked a little bit about this a few minutes ago, but we're going to start off here with just recipient mares 101. What is a recipient mare? I explained that earlier. Basically think of it as a surrogate, but I do think what you said a few minutes ago, I tell people that sometimes. I have to tell myself that sometimes whenever I'm like, man, I'm just so disappointed that my embryo didn't work because we play the same game that our customers play.

We have the same embryos and Kim gets the same calls from me. That's Kim, will you please make sure this is a blue roan filly whenever you put it in? And then if it doesn't work, she gets the same. I call and whine to Kim. So it's universal. Just know that we have the same. But when we talk about a reset, she's a surrogate, but we are literally taking this tiny, we can't, me and you can't hardly see it. It's so little. A lot of times Dr. Collins at the Recep Farm is thawing that embryo that was made years ago and we are implanting it into this Recep. That is a crazy thaw. Essentially, it's a foreign object that we're putting in these mares uterus and expecting them to just take it and accept it and grow it.

If you think about it in a whole, that's crazy. It's crazy. That is nuts. And their uterus is already such an unexpected thing because you don't know what you can't see. Yeah. So you don't know. We're trying to control every aspect of that we can from start to finish. So just like you said a while ago, a lot of people, it just starts when the embryo is transferred. For me, it starts a long time before that. Let's talk about the management of these mares because I think people get this feeling that they're sending their embryo to a re-sip and, oh, this re-sip farm just bought this mare and they brought her up and she was in heat. They let her ovulate And four days later, they put an embryo in her.

And I can't believe that it costs us. And I, theoretically, yes, we've all been there. And truthfully, that was the reason I got into having recipient mares in the beginning. Because I'm like, it can't be that hard. Like, you just grab some mares and do it. Everybody thinks that. I think it's just so simple. And it is not that simple. So, for instance, I think it's important for people to understand that we buy our mares long before breeding season. Absolutely. And let's just talk about what whenever we get a set of mares, you going through them and what you're looking for. When I'm looking at purchasing a mare, there's about three main criterias that I look at. Age is very important to me. We don't want to be buying a 12-year-old mare that could have progesterone problems.

We want longevity. We want something that we're going to keep and it's going to stay in our herd and do a good job for us for years to come. So age is very important. Two is just their mannerisms. If they're easy to handle, they're easy to be around. And the other one is uterine. uterine health, conformation, and when I'm talking about conformation, I'm talking about reproductive conformation, are the three most priorities for me. Those three have to be checked off when we're looking at a mare. And so that everybody understands what happens is we will maybe have 15 mares a lot of times come in one day, and we will go through those mares, and our team will palpate them, we'll handle them, we'll check them.

That doesn't mean all 15 mares are going to stay. A lot of times only 10 of those stay. And that is part of our process. What we say here is we're going to buy grade one mares and we buy the best recips that we can buy. And like Kim said, a lot of that has to do with age. We want to buy younger mares, preferably not maiden mares that are going to be able to come into our program, learn and get comfortable in our day to day and be able to go out, have a baby, come back in year after year. Because in my opinion, my favorite mares are the ones, and an insurance company will argue with me over this, but I love the mares that we have that are 16, 17, 18. Those are the best ones. And a lot of times my embryos get put into them.

We call them solo-only mares. A lot of times they end up getting my embryos, and those mares are outstanding. We have one mare that's. Probably 20. I just put embryo in her, call her meemaw, and she just trucks along every year. And most of the meemaws get the solo embryos, the ones that are my personal ones that are going to stay here, and that's great. We talk about most of those mares that are that age have been here since they were four. Yes. And they have been in Graves' program that became our program since then. And I didn't talk about this in the beginning, but I'm going to chat a little bit about how Solacelec's ReSip Herd came about. We laughed jokingly. I said in 2020, 2021, I was on the same page as everybody else.

It's like, why are ReSips so expensive? We can do it ourselves. And so by golly, we bought, I don't know, the first year, 50 ReSips. And then we were like, oh my gosh, we didn't mean to sign up for this. This is way more work than we meant for it to be. It costs a lot more than we meant for it to cost. By the time you buy the mares, you feed You take into account the mares that don't work. So you have dumped a bunch of money into mares that you have no pregnancy from. So you either choose to let those mares go or to use them the next year. And so we went through that whole process in 2020-21, thinking we could outsmart the system. And then we realized we couldn't outsmart the system. There's a reason that ReSip farms exist.

And so it was like you decide either you're going to become a ReSip farm, i.e. Solo is going to become a ReSip farm, or we're going to use ReSips from someone else. We started really thinking, okay, if we're going to grow this ReSip or this repro business, then we probably need to have ReSips. So you'll hear us talk about Graves in this. And when we say that, we're referring to Curtis and Debbie Graves Heard. We bought, Solo bought Curtis and Debbie Graves out in June, July 2023. It was a really great opportunity for us. We've had a wonderful working relationship with Debbie and Curtis since then. They have been extremely supportive of what we've done here. Curtis comes over and tells us often what we're doing wrong and we will come in and say hi and then he tells us what we're doing wrong we listen jokingly we say that Curtis is great he comes and helps his palpate on days that we need help and he's been absolutely wonderful and so they did an amazing job of building a re-sip herd for what probably 20 years I would say and we were able to buy their herd out in 2023 combine it with the herd that we started in 2020 that's come to now having about 2,500 mares.

And when we bought Curtis and Debbie's herd out, we also bought their facility. And that's something I want to talk a little bit about is the facility and why that facility works so well for us. Let's talk about 2023. We bought Curtis and Debbie's. You came on shortly after, and we've done a lot of improvements to the place, but this place is made to keep mares in a way that they can be in their herd in a natural setting but. I think it's all about minimizing stress. Yes. So let's talk about that with the facility and why that works. And that's something else I want to touch base on. And we just talked about, too, is purchasing the resets. People think that, oh, Joe Blow down the road can pull in and sell one to Kim.

No, they cannot sell one to Kim like that. We have to be careful with letting outside horses come into that ranch. We are a closed herd. People think, oh, you just sit with your feet up during off season. No, I do not. That's when I'm building my herd. That's when we're purchasing other horses to bring them in. And that way we have no way of having anything come in and get your mare that's pregnant sick And so what you're saying there is during the off season we buy those mares And then those mares never step foot on our place for a while for 30 days at least and so those mares get We say okay, we're going to take these 10 mares or two mares or 20 mares or however many come in that day And we say okay these mares are going to join the herd They immediately come off of those palpation stalks and go back into a trailer and they go to another facility that is...

10 miles from here and quarantined by themselves over there or with any other mares that we've recently bought. And they stay over there during the off season a lot of times for 90 days. And those mares will go over there. And then during breeding season, we really don't buy mares. For a reason. It's just too big of a risk for us to have something come in that could completely jeopardize our entire program. If you think about something coming in with a new strand of strangles and getting every single one of our recips sick, that's stress. That's going to that's going to cause issues with our entire herd. So it's just not worth it. Yeah. And so what our goal is with this, so that people understand managing a large herd.

And when Kim says we have a closed herd, what that means is we have a herd that has lived together. It's no different than having a community of people that have been together. And I always think of it like a kindergarten class. Whenever you have a kindergarten class at the very beginning of the year, all those little kids are sick in the beginning because they're all around each other and they're all sharing new germs. That's what the resips do out by themselves somewhere else. And so whenever they come in and they've decided that they've shared all their new germs with each other, they'll come in and that is when during the off season we will put those mares on the ranch and blend them with the herd.

And then they've gone through everything they need to go through. And so we can blend those mares with the herd and that happens during the off season. But during breeding season, we're very careful and we do not put new mares together with everything else. The other thing that happens is those pregnant mares always stay by off by themselves, like where they cannot be nose to nose with other mares. And so let's talk a little bit about why that is so important. Just because when those mares are heavy bred like that, any denominator that could cause stress on their pregnancy, we want to eliminate immediately anything that we can do to prevent that. So on the off chance that we do have something come through one of our pens or one of our herds, we don't want to risk them being able to spread it to our pregnant mare.

We are very fortunate that we have enough pins in areas where we can keep those pregnant mares separate and just take that risk completely out of the realms. It's out of the air. We don't have to worry about that at all. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so when we talk about the management of reset mares from the day somebody calls and puts a embryo on the board and you guys look at that and start making decisions literally that day. Let's talk a little bit about that and how those mares are set up prior to an embryo getting put in. Okay. Every one of our mares are cultured. We do the cultures here on site. We have our results very fast so we can manage that mare and our herd as best as possible. So once we know we have a clean culture, then we will start the steps of setting that mare up for that specific day.

And when you say setting a mare up, let's explain to somebody that has never set a recent mare up, what does that mean? So just giving her the shots that she needs to ovulate that embryo because we manage their cycle. So if I know that I need 10 mares for Tuesday, then I know where these mares are in their cycle and what mares I want to choose to give those shots on what day that I need them to ovulate. So I manage the herd from start to finish. And just to break it down even further for somebody that doesn't know how the reset process works, what we do is we give these mares, typically you can manage their cycles. And Kim can look at those mares or our veterinarians that are palpating mares whoever is helping with palpations that day and say hey this mare if we give her Desirelin which is an agent that's going to cause her to ovulate if we give her that Desirelin theoretically she's going to ovulate and when we check her she's going to be, essentially day zero. So when we want those mares to ovulate and then we're going to put an embryo in them anywhere from four to eight days later, depending on the type of embryo in the mare herself and her history.

And I think it's a little bit confusing to people that don't know a lot of the breeding terms and what is setting up a reset means. It's really a full circle, very comprehensive process that starts from the first time they come into heat. Then we're going to culture them and make sure that everything looks good and let them go through that heat cycle and then bring them back around and say, okay, they had a clean culture. Everything was good. This cycle looks really good. We're going to let her ovulate. She doesn't have a bunch of fluid. She looks really clean. Okay, great. We're going to bring her in. And so then we've gotten a mare to ovulate. She had a clean culture. Everything's good. Everybody's happy. It's, let's say it's the third day after she ovulates.

So after the third day she ovulates, that mare gets sorted off into append for Dr. Collins to check. He'll go through all the what we call uses for the day and then he'll decide which ones are prime grade one mares that we want to accept to use for embryos the following day. So then that next step goes into what embryos are we going to receive that day and we can manage those regardless if they're coming from GenTech that they're being thawed versus if we're thawing them on the ranch or if they're fresh Ixies that are coming in. We have those day fours which would be what we would put a day six ICSI in versus or if we have fresh embryos coming in that day. Because a lot of those denominators, we don't know. We don't know if we're going to get an embryo on that day or what grade it's going to be or what size.

So like we've said, we're trying to control the uncontrollable. We're trying to manage that as best as we physically can. Yeah. And so those mares are going to... So our day three mares, Dr. Collins is going to go through them. He's going to look at them. He's very picky and he will say, okay, these, for instance, if we think we have a possibility of having 10 fresh ICSI coming in a day, let's just say we're managing our set of day fours right now. We're not talking about fresh flushes. We're managing our day fours, which are typically going to get all of our ICSI embryos. There's lots of different evidence behind using what we call day fours, which means four days post-OV versus days five, six, seven, eights for fresh flushes.

So that's how we manage them here is the day fours all get icsies. The days five through eight will get a fresh flush depending on the mare, depending on the embryo, all of that, correct? Yes. And so we'll talk about the day fours today. We might have 10 fresh icsies coming or theoretically have a possibility, let's say. Yes, possibility. Possibility. And that's really the key word here is people think, I can buy a couple of recent mares and we can set them up and it'll be fine. But the key is when we have 10 fresh XC possibilities coming, we might also get zero that day. And we might get 12 somehow whenever a couple extra people call and we might have to turn some of them away. But it's like feast or famine some days on that.

And so we have all these mares set up. We probably had to set up 15 mares to get those 10. And that's one thing that I think is really important. And we talk about numbers. Why do we have so many mares? That is why. Because we have the volume that we can not only pull from those mares to set up 15, but then there is no stress on our team to say, hey, these five are not ideal. We don't like them. No big deal. We're going to kick them back out. We're going to put them on the board to check again. And we're not having to force and use those mares that probably just didn't have a great cycle or they've got some fluid or whatever it is, we don't have to use them. I think that is really important for people to understand. So let's talk about like why the volume is so important on mares.

You said it word for word right there because it really is being able to manage that herd and be able to say, you know what? We just don't like that mare today. No sweat. We'll just short cycle her back and her next cycle will be better. There's no sweat. There's no stress. We're not pulling our hair out trying to figure out what embryo we're going to put in what mare. We're not just dumping your embryo in a mare because we don't have anything else that's going to fit. We purposely set up more mares than we need on every day so that we can juggle that and we can still put your embryo in the best mare possible. And that's something that not many recent facilities can do. They don't have the numbers to do it.

And that is, I think, what we have really tried to look at is, of course, it costs more to manage that set of mares, but I think our outcomes for our customers are so much better. And it just allows us to feel like that we are doing a really good job. Does that mean every embryo works? No. Absolutely not. It doesn't. I would love to say that's the secret sauce and that gives us 100% success rate, but it doesn't. But it does, it all goes back to what controllables can we control in this breeding game, whether we're talking about stallions, whether we're talking about donor mares that we're flushing or aspirating, or we're talking about reseps. There is a lot of things we can't control. And I heard somebody say one time, and it's my favorite thing to think of in the breeding game, is we have these little things that maybe help increase our rates by 1%.

So we have these mares and maybe being able to peel out those mares that are not perfect, like you could use them, but they're not perfect. Maybe that increases our rates by 1%. But then maybe doing the different hormone therapy that we're going to talk about here in a minute. Post-transfer, maybe that increases at a half a percent or one percent. And then maybe these other little things. Next thing, we're up five percent. Five percent more embryos are going to work this year because of these extra little steps we've taken. And so when we can control every single piece of the equation, which has really been my goal, is can we control the semen? Can we control the donor mare? Can we control the re-sip mare?

And we add a little percent here and there in each of those steps, all of a sudden your rates are so much better. That doesn't mean we still don't miss. It doesn't mean we still don't have embryos that don't work, but I think it makes, or I know it makes the rates significantly better. And let's talk about the setup of these mares. We have our day four mares. Then we have our fresh flush mares that are going to be days, what we call day five, six, seven, sometimes eight, just depending on the mare, the embryo, the size of the embryo. There's so many different things that go into account. Dr. Collins does all of our implants. What I'd like to touch base on with that, though, is the thawing on site.

And you actually have some experience in the ICSI world and thawing embryos and things like that. So let's talk a little bit about the advantage of being able to thaw on site for us and those embryos going right into marriage. It's such a huge advantage because we're taking that veritable of thawing it somewhere else and having to sit in the car for an hour or stuck in traffic for two out before it gets to us. We thaw that thing and it immediately goes into a mare. So your success rate is going to increase like the percentage we just talked about. It's going to increase. It's going to help it in any way we can physically help it. It's. And so what we do is we have a lab that we built that has very specific air filters in it. It's very important.

Air quality is a very big deal. So we designed this lab that sits literally right next to where embryos are put in on a mare. We have a very specific air system and filtration system in this. And Dr. Collins will not let you enter this. Like, you know, there's no tours of the embryo lab. You can look from the outside. You can't come in. There's a window and you can look at it in the window. And that's all you're going to get. and so that is by design so we have this lab area that is right next to where we put embryos in and dr collins does all of the thawing in there and those embryos are thawed and immediately implanted into a mare and i think that gives us a lot of advantage whenever we talk about those embryos like you said not necessarily bouncing around with a courier for three hours before we put them in and not to say that doesn't work we put a lot of embryos and work just fine that work fine from facilities, whether they're fresh X's or thawed X's, they do fine.

But once again, can we take a small variable out? Does that help a half a percent or a percent? Possibly. And so we think that for us to have those embryos there, have the freedom to make sure that we are literally checking that mare that embryo is going in before we thaw it. If that mare has anything that makes us say, maybe we loved her yesterday, but we don't love her as much right now and we need to put an embryo in or in five minutes, your frozen embryo just stays frozen for the day. No sweat. And so that is what that freedom of being able to thaw our own embryos right there has allowed is us to be. Able to be oh I'm trying to think of the right word like we just have so much freedom to be able to picky yeah we can be picky absolutely and that is huge for us and so that is how the thawed embryos work on site and I think it's important for people to know that when they ICSI or they can ICSI anywhere a lot of these embryos we're getting are people that have ICSI'd like in North Carolina and Washington and those embryos come down to our lab and we thaw them right here and put them in for these people.

And that's been a really good tool for those northern breeders to use as they can ICSI and aspirate those mares up there. Gene Tech a lot of time is doing the ICSI and then those embryos come to us whether they're frozen or fresh and we can get them put in for those people. And it's been just so much less stress on their donor mares or home. They can get aspirated. And so that's been a great tool for us. It has been huge. Okay, so we've talked about the transferring of the embryos. We've talked about thawing embryos on site. Let's move into a mare gets an embryo and what we do is whenever our mares get an embryo put in those mares are immediately taken back to their herd and put back with their herd they don't sit in a pen all day they don't stand tied up they don't get hauled they just get when we say we put them on a trailer that means they're getting on a trailer to go on the ranch they get a little ride from one area to the ranch to their pen so that way the stress is zero once they get their embryo and they're done The most important thing that we can do from the minute that embryo is put in is keep the stress as low as possible.

Why is that so important? Stress is the last thing we want. We don't want any stress. We want to keep everything as calm and collected as possible. Stress is going to interfere with our progesterone levels. It's going to cause stress. All kinds of problems that we don't want. So anything we can do to prevent that, we're going to do. Well, I think the key is that stress is probably, in my opinion, it's the number one reason we see that mares will lose a foal that wouldn't have otherwise. So I say that because we will say, have somebody come and say, hey, I'm taking my recit home. Okay. It's June 20th. It's 120,000 degrees outside and their hauler shows up at two o'clock in the middle of the day with a trailer full of horses that are sweaty, and they're going to load their resip on there, and off they go.

And then, unfortunately, it seems like it never fails on those mares that leave in the middle of the day in the summer with a hauler that's just trying to make sure they get paid. They don't really have the best interests of trying to make sure they pick up at night and hauling at night and letting those mares rest during the day and. Then all of a sudden we get the call from the owner, hey, this mare is open a month later. That stress will make your mares abort, whether it's sickness, whether it's stress from hauling, whether it's a new herd. Now, does that happen on every single one? Absolutely not. We send a lot of mares all over the country that do fine. But it is important that we have haulers that know what they're doing.

And when you get them home, they go into a place that they don't stress. And hopefully they're with a friend. And those things all play into your mare holding on to that foal long-term. And I think a lot of people don't understand that. And that is one reason here that we have a live foal guarantee if those mares stay on site. So let's talk about what that live foal guarantee is and why we do it like that. If a re-sip stays with us all the way through foaling, whether it happens at day 50, day 90, day 300, or during foaling, if that doesn't stand and suck, they get a redo on the re-sip. That's past heartbeat. Once the mare's past heartbeat, then that's when the live foal guarantee kicks in. Yeah. And so our live foal guarantee is that if that mare stays with us all the way through foaling, anytime from the heartbeat check on to the day the re-sip foals, if she loses the baby, if the baby doesn't stand a nurse, if anything like that happens, you're covered and you have what we call a live foal guarantee.

That means that you're going to get a redo on your re-sip that year. So whether it's that transfer or another transfer that you want to do that year, I guess it would be the following year, you'll get that re-sip at no charge to you. And so- A lot of people are like, why do you guys do that only if they stay with you? It's very specific. There's a reason we do it that way, and it's because the consistency of the care is so important. These mares go home, and they have, when the owner's doing it, that's paid all the bills, those mares get everything they need. They get regimen every day or progesterone or whatever it is. Whenever they need to go on vacation in the summer and the neighbor kid is supposed to come over and give that re-sip regimen...

And then some of those mares have to have that hormone support to hold on to those babies. That's just part of the game that we play. And when they don't get it for four days in a row, sometimes that's going to be the difference in what makes her go all the way to term. And that and just keeping these mares from being stressed. I think that is probably more important even than the follow-up care and the progesterone shots and the pneumabort shots and the full comprehensive program of things they get here. Is just that when these mares are checked of their home, they feel comfortable there. They're safe there. They're on a routine. The routine is so important. They get fed at the same time every single day. They know exactly what it means whenever that tractor comes pulling up.

They have a pecking order in that herd and they go up to those bins and eat and there's no stress. Okay, so we've implanted our embryos and now we're at the first preg check. Tell me how that works and then what happens after we see the pregnancy? Okay, when that mare comes in the stalks, first preg check and we see the pregnancy. We also, we do two things. One, we actually note where the pregnancy is located, if it's by the cervix, if it's up in the horn. That's important to me just in the later term when I'm checking just to make sure it's healthy, it's sitting where it's supposed to. And then we also pull a progesterone on that mare the day we see the pregnancy. This is something that we started last year and I feel like it's really helped our percentages because if that mare does have a poor CL where she's not producing the amount of progesterone, she needs to maintain that pregnancy.

Okay, I'm going to pause you right there, but I want people to know too that the day of transfer, that mare's already getting oral regimen. Correct. So she's already on oral regimen no matter what. They're going to stay on that. At our ranch, they're going to stay on that through 150 days. So we're pulling a progesterone and explain to them what is a progesterone? What exactly are we testing for? Okay, so when we're pulling a progesterone on a mare that we just detected a pregnancy on, we are testing how much progesterone that mare's making from her seal. The CL is where the follicle was sitting where she ovulated. So that's what sends her brain to telling her, hey, we're pregnant. We need to do whatever thing we can to maintain this pregnancy.

So in some circumstances, that CL may not produce the adequate amount of the gestrone to maintain a pregnancy. So in our case, even though they are receiving oral regimen daily. Sometimes that can't be enough. So we're catching and we're detecting that as early as we can so that we can supplement with the injectable P4 to raise the progesterone as high as we can to maintain that pregnancy. So we have the progesterone machine here. So we run that day. It gets ran that day. I know the next day, if not the same day, what mares are low so that we can start them on the injectable. And I think this is one thing that's really interesting about progesterone levels is some, whether it's a donor mare or a resit mare.

Some years they need progesterone and some years they don't, which is so weird to me because you would think, oh, maybe this mare reproductively just doesn't do what she needs to do. But one year her progesterone will be perfectly fine. The next year it might not. And the next pregnancy, you aren't giving her anything. It's just all based on that CL. And really, it just depends on the mare. Sometimes they can have a perfect CL and they can produce over the adequate amount of progesterone and sometimes they don't. But that's where we try to just control it as much as we physically can to make sure they're getting everything they need to maintain that pressure. Yeah. And that was something, like you said, we put into place last year.

We looked at the stats and we do feel strongly that did make a difference in those mirrors. And so it is a little bit of extra money for the person that owns the embryo because we're giving the oral regimen and the P4 shots, but it's cheap insurance whenever we think about that and that our customers are always happy to pay that. But a lot of places will take a mirror off of regimen if they test good. They'll take them off. Yeah. And we did that too, I think the first year, didn't we? Whenever, if we had a fresh flush we took those mares off of regimen we just found that those mares are coming up for regimen anyways why would we not keep them on that to make sure that if those mares dip down because you don't test them again is the rule of thumb yeah we check them again at heartbeat but like a typical place if they pull them off at heartbeat check they're done no more progesterone tests they won't ever check them again and so we just keep them on we fill and i tell people i do that on my mares your mare gets the same thing my mare kit so whether it's a fresh flush or not my mare i might do not take her off regimen. I don't care what that progesterone test says.

It makes no difference to me. You leave her on that oral regimen. If we need to give her those P4 shots, you do that too. And so I think that's important for people to understand the hormone therapy and how important that is. And we've all spent a lot of time and money to get to the point of having an embryo to even put into a reset. Let's make sure we do every single thing we can. Absolutely. Our late term slip rate has been hardly nothing this last year because of it. I think that's made that big of a difference. I agree. We actually were sitting down looking at it the other day and I was shocked at just how good those mares have done on late term, like you said, late term slips. And I think...

It's a huge, it's really a comprehensive program that has helped that. But one thing is the hormone therapy. But once again, all these little things add up 1%, 1%, 1%. Next thing you know, we're up 5%, we're up 10%. And so that is why the comprehensive program is so important. When we typically keep them on the oral regimen and the P4, if they are on supplemental P4 until they're 150 days, technically, they started getting progesterone from the placenta at 120 days. So that doesn't matter if their CL is poor at that point. But we continue to give it 150 days just to give them absolutely everything they need. And that is just trying to make sure we go above and beyond to make sure there is no question that we have done everything that we can do to make sure that is a successful pregnancy for our customers.

Mares will come up every day, same time every day, and they get their oral regimen. And it's so fun to watch you guys do that because your crew has I'm so trained. You'll see those mares and they just know they put their head right there and they get their regimen and it's just they told me that was how it works. I'm like there's no way that's how it works. Yep. They walk through and they know the guys and those guys put their hand over their head and give them their regimen and that's that and they keep walking. I have two guys that regimen 200 mares a day. Yeah. And it's just the two boys. And those mares just get into that routine and it's comfortable for them and they know it and horses crave a routine.

They want to know what's going to happen, when it's going to happen. They want to know what's going to happen at the same time every day. And so those mares are in a routine and they know exactly what's going to happen every day. And there's nothing that stresses them out. So once again, that's just us taking an extra factor out that can cause our pregnancies to fail. And we see it here. It's crazy the different rates of these mares post 60 days, what they do on holding onto these embryos when they stay here versus when they go home. It's a huge difference. And it doesn't matter how much education we do with our customers. I always tell people, I'm like, you have a day job. You don't want, if you want to sign up for another day job, that's totally fine.

But if you don't, leave your mare here. Because if you only sign up for the day job for two months and then you're like, ah, she'll either hold on to the baby or she won't. But it's also that. It's also managing their vaccine schedule. These mares come up even when they're past 45 days. We check them monthly. They get a preg check every month to make sure that the placenta health looks good. It's not trying to detach anywhere. Baby looks all right. They get their pre-full vaccinations that they're due for at the beginning of the month. We check in the beginning of the month. The thing that we need to address at the beginning of the month, we can. So that is just like yesterday. That's what we did yesterday.

It's the first of the month. Everything came up. All of our mares that are due in April got sorted off and taken to North. Anything that I saw in that time was told to Maria. So that way she knows what a heads up on anything needs that are coming. And the rest got their pre-fulls or anything that they were due for and they go back out to their herd. So it's just all about management. Just like you said. These are herd animals. They've stayed in this herd from the day they got their embryo. Their stress level is nothing. They are just living their best life out there, and that's such an important factor for the health of that baby. Another thing that I think is really important, and Kim laughed at me about this, but I think.

How many have we caught this year that had placentitis? Yes. And that if you weren't checking those mares or, and y'all have caught them, whether it was doing your preg checks in the beginning of the month or whenever we have the boots on the ground that are walking through those mares multiple times a day. And they say, hey, they know the mares because they walk through them multiple times a day. And they say, hey, this mare's bagging up and she shouldn't be bagging up this early. We've got something we need to check on. And how many times has that happened that we do that and we bring those mares up and there are things that we can do that have the outcome is a healthy baby that's perfectly fine.

The outcome without that intervention would have been a mare that aborted. Yes, absolutely. So talk a little bit about that and what that looks like for us when we're walking through those mares. Just like you said, my team, we look at these mares every single day. I have girls that drive the pastures twice a day and look at these things. They know when they're not acting right. They know when one's staying off by herself and she's normally with her buddy. And they recognize when something's like that. And they'll call me, hey, Kim, we probably need to get her up and check her tomorrow. And nine times out of 10, there's something going on with her. So we usually just check the placental health. I'll call Dr.

Spenceau. She'll come out, just check the baby's heart rate, make sure everything's normal there. And there's been a very large amount that this year that we've caught that have had early onset placentitis for that. Placenta is just barely starting to detach from the cervix. and we can step in there and prevent it and slow it down so we can get that mare to term and get that baby out. Yeah, and that is one thing that I think has been really important, the management and having Kim over there and somebody that really cares. Kim plays the same game we do too, which I think is important. Like, you understand the heartbreak whenever you don't get the call. You're the one that sees it. But a month before a mare is due, we have a stillborn baby. Yes. Yeah.

That's not always preventable. Sometimes there's things wrong with that baby that it doesn't matter whether we got him to term or not, it wasn't going to work. But having the ability to go and look at those and having a crew that is trained that really understands what to be looking for and how important it is to get those mares up and act fast and do what we need to do to make sure that those mares hold on is, I think it's so important. And it's such an advantage for our customers to have that ability to have their mares here provide that service. From the beginning, that's a service we wanted to provide. And I feel like we've really put together a team over the last four years that can do that.

I feel like we have between our veterinarian team, between you, between the girls that you have trained out there, like they know how important all of these things. Let's talk about nutrition with the recipes and how important that is and what we do here with our HAY program, with our partnership with ADM. How all of that turns into a successful pregnancy for our customers. Yeah, nutrition is very important when it comes to the start and finish. We're talking about these mares being in these herds and getting a routine feeding schedule from the beginning of breeding season until the end. And we feed them the ADM lick tubs, so they get those free choice. And then they also get alfalfa coastal free choice as well.

It's so important to keep that and manage that on a schedule that they're comfortable with. And I think it's important to note that happens long before breeding season. Absolutely. Those mares, like... Some people may think, oh, they just bring those mares up and they put them on feed, good feed, right before they do. Oh, it's just not how it works. Those amino acids and all those nutrients that contribute to a successful pregnancy, we can't just feed them that the day before we do a transfer and be like, oh, they're good. They've got everything they need. It does not work that way. That has to happen long before that. And so those mares, the day they get here, get started on our feed program.

And it's a comprehensive feed program. They have mineral out the day they get here. They are fed our ADM feed and mineral. So we have customized pellets that go to these mares that are specifically, we design them for resips. They have more than enough mineral, which is full of the amino acids and all the things that are important for this mare's reproductive health. We design that. We feed it. It costs more than what we could feed. We could just feed them a pellet. We could feed something that was significantly cheaper and we could feed hay that was second tier grade. And there's a lot of things we could do, but we understand that those corners cut do not make success. You know the difference? Probably not. You might, we can probably keep her fat and looking pretty good on an average hay and...

Feed that doesn't really have everything they need, but they would still probably look fine. Yeah. The day that breeding season's over this year, I'm going to start prepping for next year, the day it's done. It's not something that we just dump those mares out in a field and say, see you next year. It doesn't work that way. They're on a routine warming schedule, deworming schedule. They get their vaccinations. We are managed from the day the breeding season's over on those mares that we end up not using. We spent, what, seven days last year doing teeth on mares. Absolutely. And we, the herd health is very important. The vaccinations, it's all a comprehensive program that every single step is very important.

But I think the feed program is especially important for people to understand. A, these mares are on this, like, it's not something we just pop and say, oh, yeah, it's breeding season. Let's start feeding better. Yeah. This is something that happens long before breeding season ever starts. And that management prior to breeding season is what makes a successful breeding season for us. I think another thing here at Solo that some people don't understand is that we take embryos from literally all over the country. We have embryos, fresh flesh embryos flown in from Arizona and California and Washington and Pennsylvania and Florida and all kinds of places all the time. And then we also take the ICSI embryos that come from multiple different labs all over.

Most of those labs are concentrated here, but we do get some ICSI embryos in there. And so I think it's important for people to know you don't have to do your breeding work here at Solo to use these recipient mares. We understand that sometimes it makes more sense for you to have your mare at a regional veterinarian and be able to ship those embryos. And I think that scares some people to ship them, but we have a lot of success with that. So let's talk a little bit about those mares that are located regionally and how the heck those embryos get to us. I think some people are like, I don't understand how that would even work. So the day that your donor mare, the mare that you're flushing. Ovulates, that would be the point in time where your veterinarian would reach out to us and say, okay, hey, our mare ovulated.

We want to get her on the list in seven days. We're going to be flushing that embryo and shipping it to you. So at that point, we'll get her on the board we talked about earlier on our board so that I know this is how we need to manage our herd this week. This is what we need. I know what we need from start to finish for that entire week. So the day that the mare's flushed, then the. Veterinarian or whoever's doing the flushing for you will arrange with a courier to have that embryo taken to the airport and flown to us or a courier if it's local enough and then it'll be couriered to our facility it's crazy to think of that once again we think of like when you step back you're like this is crazy we have an embryo this morning that was in washington and it's here today it got on a plane and it flew here and it's flew here and it is in a recent mare and then on a fresh flush, then five days later, we're like, hey, your recent's pregnant. It's crazy.

Funny story. Last year, we had a lady, she was from up north somewhere. Her embryo got lost on the plane, and we were in all-out pain. It didn't end up getting to us until midnight, and Colin stayed and put that embryo in, and it worked. You think about how nuts that is. That's crazy. Yes. And it worked. She had a fall. Everything's fine, and that's nuts. Yeah, it's really cool, and it's just science is so amazing that we can still have a regional breeder that doesn't have to ship their mare to texas to do it but can get those embryos get them put in a lot of them leave their recipes here and we pull them out a lot of them will get them at 60 90 days and ship them home either way it's just really cool that we are able to do that and.

A lot of people end up shipping those embryos down here because there aren't, there's a lot of regional veterinarians, but there's not a lot of re-sip farms. No. Because like we talked about here, it takes such a large number of mares to really have a re-sip farm and to do it. So that's why I think people are like, why are the re-sip farms only in Texas and Oklahoma? It's because we have such a concentrated horse population here that there's enough embryos to support that many re-sips. But there has to be that many re-sips to support that many embryos too. And so that is why a lot of people choose to get those embryos flush somewhere and ship them down to us or get those mares aspirated. Gene Tech is doing aspirations a lot of different places now.

And that's even better because those embryos are just coming from an hour and 40 minutes from us. So those embryos are coming. We get them and we have a courier that comes from Gene Tech literally every single day with fresh embryos or whatever it is. Yeah. Those go in. We can take embryos from any veterinarian, and we're happy to talk to any vet clinics that need some guidance on how it works. If they haven't shipped a lot of embryos out or anything like that, we can tell them how it works. We'll step them through it. Yes, we're happy to help with all of that. And for people that don't want to go through that, Solo also does really full circle service. And that's what a lot of our customers do is their mares do come here, whether they're breeding to a stallion that does stand here at Solo or they're breeding to something that stands somewhere else.

I think what people like about that is they bring their mare, they get put in a text group, and then they're very hands-on. And Kim, you're in those text groups. And you see what we talk about in there. But when your mare comes here. You just, I say, I just need my marching orders. What are we doing? Give me a list. Give me an order. Let me know if you send in your contracts. If you haven't, we'll handle that too. And Cody in our front office handles all that from A to Z. And we're able to get those mares, whether it's flush or exceed or they're carrying or all three, which is sometimes our plan is we're going to flush them once. Then we're going to exceed them and freeze some embryos and then put them in full to carry. We can do all of those here.

We have very full circle here. And then those embryos come to you. We get them in re-sips and a lot of those re-sips will stay all the way through foaling. We'll wean their babies and then their babies are halter broke, vaccinated, trimmed. They've had everything they need. They've had all the plasma, all the long list of things we talk about with ReSIPs that come with managing ReSIPs also come with managing newborn falls. Absolutely. That's a whole other podcast and a whole other program. They may pick them up as weanlings. And so we can provide a full service here from start to finish, or we can jump in here and be part of the. Process in any way that our customers need, which I think provides a lot of value for them.

Last thing I want to talk about is our recent mare incentives. We've seen all these stallion incentives come up and you play the game just like I do. We know how important these stallion incentives are to the marketability of our babies, whether we're going to keep them and show them ourselves, which you do. I think that's cool to know. It's like you go and show cutting horses that you've raised yourself. And so during the off season, most of the time, sometimes during the breeding season, but most of the time there's not much time for horse showing during breeding season. Unfortunately, no. But during the off season, you go and show these horses that you have, which is very fun for you, literally create it. Yes. Which is really cool.

But you play the cutting game. Let's talk about the re-sip of Maren Senev and how cool that is for anybody that has cutting horses going to the faturity this year. I think it's something incredible and it's something that no one's done. It's something that really is no skin off of anybody else's back. It's you backing, solo backing what we're doing, the confidence that we have in our ReSip program, which is incredible. I think it's something that's going to change. And what we thought was most people that have horses go into the Futurity are breeders. A good number of them are, and they're all getting ReSip mares from somewhere. But there hasn't ever been an opportunity for them to get any payback from that.

They've invested in ReSips, but. Re-sips have never invested back in them. And so this was, I think, Ty and I's way to say, hey, we recognize that you guys spend a lot of money on reproduction. A lot of that is put into stallion incentives, but we never see anything come from the re-sip side. So what can we do to give you an opportunity to get your re-sip money back? And this is one way that they can do it. Ty and I are excited to offer this and be able to provide people an opportunity, $100,000. All they have to do is lease a recess. There's no incentive fees. Yeah, you're going to lease recess no matter what. And so this is a great opportunity for you to get some of your breeding bills back and add some extra earnings to your three-year-olds.

And that is going to pay out in the open non-pro and amateur this year. So it will spread out equally over all the finalists that have leased a recess mare. So it doesn't matter whether you don't have an open faturity finalist. If you're going to show in the non-pro or amateur, this is still a great opportunity. The reality is you could win more in this recent incentive than you went at the fraternity. So it's really cool and we're proud to do it. And I think us and these other breeding facilities and stallion owners all across the industry, not just here at Solo, have really doubled down to invest back in the industry. And I think it's such a cool time to be a breeder because you really do have opportunities to win so much, not only at the fraternity because of the growth with NCHA and what they're doing, but also the growth of all of the breeding facilities, really supporting back into these people that support them.

I think that wraps up a lot of what we want to talk about today, just explaining to people how our program works and what it consists of. People that have questions. Tell them how they can contact us and even talk to you what we're here to do as far as helping them understand the process. You can reach out to Logan. She's at our main office. She can answer any question that you may have, even if it's regarding the steps to get your frozen embryos here with us so that we can thaw them. She can walk you through exactly what we need to do. She can walk you through our contract. If you have any questions on there, she can tell you exactly any questions that you may have on it. And you can reach me there too. If you want to call her and you guys want to talk to me, I will take time to answer any questions anybody has.

Yeah, and also I think it's important for people to know what the process looks like. If they call and they talk to you or Logan and get their questions answered, they fill out one re-sip contract a year here with us. So that covers all the transfers for the year. It's a docusign. It's very simple. We try to make things very easy. You're at Solo. You get that filled out. And whether you're doing your breeding work here or we're taking an embryo from you that, like we said, is in Arizona or wherever. From there, you're going to get put in a text message group that's going to include our management team and the ReCip Farm phone. And that is how we keep everybody updated. So you can text and check in anytime, ask questions.

Yes. We have people use that year round. They take their ReCip mares home and then they have a question. They just text into our group and they just ask the question and they get an answer right then. And I think that's a really important tool for people to have and know that they really have access to our team and our entire management team here, especially that we all play this game. We understand the questions they're going to have and they can get an answer right away. And that is how the communication happens. And we'll text and say, hey, you know, we wanted to let you know that your embryo is working or hey, it's at a heartbeat check and the heartbeat looked great and we just want to let you know everything's good here.

And then you can come in and ask questions anytime you want. But I think that's been a really cool tool for our customers to have direct communication with us and also get their lists. We have some customers that put in 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 embryos. They get a list from us with updates multiple times a week that have a line that shows each embryo and what the status is, the last date it was checked, if it's in full with a heartbeat, if it's just marked as what's in full, which means we haven't gotten to a heartbeat check yet, things like that. So from you coming from both sides as somebody that's managed a farm plus also a breeder themselves, I think that's... You can definitely appreciate that. Absolutely. And communication is key.

Even during off-season, if your ReCip comes in with a foot abscess, you're going to get a text in that group, hey, she's doing good. We checked her. The baby looks good, but we brought her in. She's got an abscess, so we're going to keep her in and pack that foot for a couple days. You guys are going to get everything that you need to know about that ReCip while she's in our care. If people have questions, like Kim said, you can call our ReCip farm and talk to them. We have lots of information too on our website about ReCip leases that include our pricing and copies of the contract and all of that. But we're happy to help. You can call our main office. You can call our resip office. We can walk you through exactly the process.

We have a lot of people that this is every year we coach them through. It's their very first time to ever do an embryo transfer, whether it's a fresh flush or an ICSI. And that's what we're here for. We're happy to walk you through all of the steps of that. And it's fun now because we have some of those that came in 22 or 23 that this was their first time. And now they're professionals. They've been in it for three or four years. They understand the process. They've gotten all the education from us and they've had a lot of success the last couple of years. So they're still with us and we've grown their breeding programs to something even bigger now. And we can handle any part of that breeding process from A to Z.

If you guys have questions, just get in touch with our office. And Kim, thanks for coming today. I know we have to let you go because it's time to check reset. Thanks everybody for spending some time with us today and we'll see you on the next episode.