ICSI Results

[00:00:00]Kennedy and Arlene out did themselves in this last round of ICSI. For those that don't know, periodically my best donor mares, meaning the mares that I want to put their embryos into recips and have multiple of their babies per year, we will harvest their oocytes, so their eggs, and then we will do ICSI. So, it's it's similar to IVF. In this last round, we aspirated oocytes from Kennedy, from Arlene who's hiding behind her, and from Sophie who's over here looking disgusting. And wouldn't you know, Kennedy again was an overachiever. Now, Arlene and Sophie both they didn't give that many oocytes to start off with.

[00:00:44]They were both close to their end of their cycle. And so, they didn't have a lot of small follicles with a ton of oocytes in them. They had larger follicles because they were closer to ovulation. And so, we only ended up getting two embryos from Arlene, which mind you is still amazing. Like, ICSI is rough sometimes. And so, two embryos from one round is still amazing. So, that gives us I believe three total embryos with VS Code Red going into 2026 breeding season. We might end up breeding her to First Things First as well and doing a regular embryo transfer into a recip. I haven't decided yet, but that's awesome that we have a couple frozen. Unfortunately, Sophie she did not give us any embryos this time, but that doesn't really mean much to me. You know, I've had mares give a ton of embryos one time and then none the next.

[00:01:39]It just it just depends on the time. But then, I think Kennedy is coming for the queen title from Beyoncé and Fruity.

[00:01:47]I think she wants the queen broodmare title. Because she's close to being my most proven mare on the entire farm. She might you might be able to consider her my most proven mare on the entire farm and almost every time we do Ixi, every time like we have had the best luck. I think I have over 20 embryos frozen from her now. So it's safe to say she's taking a break. We don't we don't need any more. So this last round she gave us 33 oocytes to just start with. So we were like, "Okay, that's a lot. Let's go ahead and split it up between two stallions." So we used RL Best of Sudden as one of them because that's her most proven cross. That is the sire of my young stallion, First Things First, and with him being so successful at the moment we were like, "We need some full siblings, right?" So five RL Best of Sudden embryos and then the day that she gave us so many oocytes I had to find a second stallion. I was like, "Let's try somebody different." And I've been dying to breed one of my mares to It's a Southern Thing and I had previously purchased a breeding to him and I hadn't used it yet. And so I called Amy and I was like, "Hey, I really need to use my breeding in a different way. Can I get a different contract and does he have semen at Equiembryo?" And she said, "Yes." So we got that all figured out really quickly.

[00:03:10]And so we now have four Kennedy It's a Southern Thing embryos.

[00:03:15]So I will definitely be using one of those this coming breeding season. Super excited for that cross. She has never been bred to It's a Southern Thing. And sadly he is now deceased. So those breedings are limited. He is fortunately grandfathered in to where he's not on a time limit to be bred to because he was born prior to 2015, but you know, frozen semen is limited and you can't get more of it. So we're super happy for our two Arlene embryos, super happy for our nine more Kennedy embryos. If we do any more aspirations this year, Kennedy and Trudy, they outdid themselves. They are taking a break. Let me know if you have any questions about that. This coming breeding season should be super exciting. I don't know. There's something about my pretty mares out here with a bunch of cows behind them that is just making me so happy. It is such a pretty sight. So, again, let me know if you have any questions and hope you enjoyed.