Passage Magazine October 2014 | Page 9

1) Congress_inglese_2) Congress_inglese 26/01/11 09.13 Pagina 35 we will put him in his stall for an hour or so and then bring him back out for another session. These training sessions will rarely go for more than 30 minutes and we may do up to 3 sessions in a day; however the vast majority of novice stallions can be collected within the first 1 or 2 sessions. If we are unsuccessful after 2 or 3 days then we may allow the stallion to mount the tease mare once and collect semen while he mounts the tease mare. Then the next day we will go back to the phantom and continue trying to stimulate him to mount the phantom. Over the last 25 years we have trained hundreds of stallions to mount a phantom for semen collection and I have only experienced a few that required mounting a live tease mare for reliable semen collection. With the proper preparation, the right team and the right attitude nearly all stallions can be trained to be reliably and safely collected off of a phantom. Some stallions will be reluctant to mount even when stimulated to a very high degree and in some cases we will slide the AV onto the stallion’s penis while he is positioned with his chest against the rear of the phantom and trigger a mount. For some stallions turning them away from the phantom and then allowing them to quickly approach the back of the phantom and bump with their chest will trigger a mount. The position of the mare may also be altered to trigger a mount. Some stallions respond to positioning the mare as described above but turning her head back around so that the stallion stretches his neck out to attempt nose to nose contact. We will continue to try these various methods as long as the stallion is showing positive progress and not becoming so frustrated that he starts to act out in a negative way against the handler or the tease mare. You must pay attention to the signals the stallion is sending and as soon as we feel he is not making positive progress This article was provided by Select Breeders Service. For more information on their world reknown services of stallion collection and semen distribution, please visit their website: www.selectbreeders. com 6 Passage Magazine 9