Westhills reproduction team offers a variety of services for your mare, including:

• Breeding Soundness Exams

  Thinking about breeding your mare? Preparing prior to breeding season increases the chances of getting pregnant. A breeding soundness exam includes a physical exam, an ultrasound, an endometrial culture and cytology and biopsy sampling.

• Cycle evaluation and pregnancy check

  The ultrasound is a useful tool for following a mare's cycle in order to determine the appropriate time to breed. It can also confirm pregnancies as early as 13 days after ovulation.

• Artificial insemination - fresh cooled and frozen

  Artificial insemination is becoming a popular method of breeding in the equine world. Our team uses several tools, such as portable ultrasound to determine the best time to inseminate your mare to maximize their chance of becoming pregnant. Advantages of artificial insemination include accurate breeding at ovulation, minimal risk of disease transmission, improved safety for your mare and handlers, and the ability to breed your prize mare to a winning stallion that is across the border.

• Embryo transfer and recipient mare managment

  Another method with increasing popularity is embryo transfer. This involves the process of breeding (via insemination or live cover) a donor mare to a stallion and then transferring the resulting embryo into a reproductively competent recipient mare, which carriers the foal to term and nurses it until weaning. ET has multiple benefits including the production of foals from performance mares while still allowing them to continue competition, multiple foals from one mare, foals from older, higher risk mares, etc.

• Foaling Out

  For many, the foaling process an be an exhausting and stressful time. We are pleased to offer extensive foaling services so you can leave the hard work up to us. These services include 24/7 video monitoring in a large, indoor foaling stall, milk calcium screening tests to predict impending foaling, foalert birth monitoring systems activated when foaling begins and veterinarian attendance and assistance.

• New foal exams

  Once your new foal arrives, the first 24 hours of its life are a crucial time. We perform an evaluation of the quality of colostrum and thorough examination of the post partum mare and new foal, including umbilical cord care, enema for decreased risk of meconium impaction and a test of antibody levels in the foals blood at 12-24 hours old to detect failure of passive transfer. Because foals are born immunologically naive, passive antibody transfer from the mare’s first milk is required to provide immune protection during the first weeks of life. Without that protection, foals become susceptible to neonatal infections within the first week.

• Treatment of sick foals

  Normal foals should get up within an hour. When they do rise, they should be active and look to interact with the mare and nurse almost immediately. The first sign that a veterinarian should be called is when a foal doesn’t act in these normal behaviours. We recommend the new foal exam because unfortunately, even if a foal seems healthy at first, an underlying issue can cause them to go downhill very quickly. Probably the most common abnormality of newborn foals is the failure to acquire adequate passive immunity through the mare’s colostrum, a problem that occurs in as many as 20 percent of cases. Neonatal infections, encephalopathy and meconium impactions are other examples of some potentially life threatening conditions. We offer around the clock, supportive care when your foal needs a bit of extra help in its first days, weeks or months of life.