AQHA September/October 2015 Magazine | Page 26

Unfortunately, it is common to encounter stallions that have had years of reinforced bad habits, which have been produced or rewarded by people without the necessary knowledge or judgement to prevent them. These stallions are then time consuming, quirky and frequently dangerous to collect. It is common to hear owners of older stallions make assertions like “he won’t tolerate anyone touching his penis at any time” and “he won’t mount a dummy and must have a jump mare”. These points are often absolutely true of their horse at that time, and must be accepted in many cases. However, if the horse had been trained the right way from the start then they wouldn’t have the inconvenient issues that are now present and often unable to be reversed. For this reason it is recommended that people get training collections done by an experienced veterinarian under ideal conditions. Obviously there are massive benefits to breeding stallions by collection and fresh or chilled AI. • It provides the ability to ship semen to mares at distant locations and thus reach a greater mare audience. •It allows the semen to be split into multiple doses so the stallion can breed more mares (a fairly average ejaculate of 5 billion live progressively motile sperm can be used to AI 10 mares without any reduction in conception rate). •If the stallion is being collected on a dummy (or “serving phantom”) the procedure is also easier to prepare for, faster to co