FAQ

For you academics, ICSI is short for Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection. It is the process of removing the oocyte (egg) from the follicle on the ovary of a mare (aspiration), manually injecting a sperm into that egg with very tiny tools on a very high powered microscope (micromanipulators), then growing the injected egg in a special incubator (triple gas) until an embryo develops (about 9 days later).

Any mare can be used as a donor for ICSI, however, in general, mares in their late teens produce less follicles, less often, and the eggs are less fertile. We have had very little success with mares over 25 yrs. That said, some young mares do not do well with the ICSI process. About 5 to 10% of mares are very difficult to get an ICSI embryo, but some mares consistently produce multiple embryos.

We have produced many ICSI embryos from 2 yr old fillies.

No, there are many veterinarians around the country now that can aspirate eggs from mares and send them to an ICSI laboratory. We do aspirate here, inject the eggs, mature them in the incubator and transfer them into recipient mares.

With the success of freezing ICSI embryos, we can now transfer your embryo into your mare. Whether the donor mare or your recipient mare, the embryo seldom develops on the day the recipient is ready to receive it. However, once the embryo is frozen, it can be thawed and transferred when the recipient mare is ready.

You have a choice – transfer or freeze. TRANSFER – transferring a fresh embryo requires a recipient mare that ovulated 4 to 5 days ago for a successful transfer. If there is one available, either from our herd, your own recipient or another ET facility, a fresh transfer is possible. FROZEN – freezing ICSI embryos has become a very successful option if done properly. Since moving to Texas, we have learned that thawing and shipping frozen embryos to another facility does not work well. However, when embryos are thawed in our lab and transferred here without shipping them, the pregnancy rates are equal to the pregnancy rates of fresh ICSI embryos.

She is considered safely in foal at 45 days. During this time, when she is at the clinic, we will perform periodic pregnancy checks and she will be on a daily progesterone supplement, Regu-mate. When she is confirmed pregnant at 45 days, you may take her home that day. Recipients can be taken sooner at the owners discretion.

Yes. We will perform a breeding soundness exam and if we can use her in the embryo program again, you will receive a refund if they are still breeding sound.

We highly suggest keeping the recipient mare on progesterone until at least 120 days regardless of her own progesterone level.

Cost will vary depending on where you have each part of the process performed. Basicly, there are three steps – 1.Aspiration the mare – collecting the oocytes from the donor mares ovary 2. Injecting the oocytes – laboratory process of mechanically placing the sperm inside the egg with a microscope and maturing the embryo 3. Transferring the embryo into a recipient mare Each step may be performed at different locations, by different people. There are many facilities perform aspirations, there are only a few labs that perform the injection and culture, and there are several locations that provide recipient mares. Costs and results will vary depending on the combination of these three services. We provide all three steps here. You can drop your mare off in the morning and pick her up that afternoon. We will aspirate her and the oocytes go directly into our lab. The injection and culture will be performed in our new state of the art laboratory by Dr Beck, who helped perfect the procedure 20 years ago. Once the embryo is mature, it will be transferred into one of our 1000 recipeint mares which have been monitered daily to insure proper timing and a healthy uterus. We recieve oocytes from other aspiration facilities, and ship finished embryos to other tranfer locations. However, we achieve consistently higher success when all steps are performed in the same place. Our cost for a 45 day pregnant recipient mare is $8300 if the entire process is performed at InFoal, Inc. That does not include a $1500 refundable deposit on the recipient mare.