Page 12 - January 6 2012

MULTIPLE EMBRYOS
Are they really killing our industry?
So what’s
the truth? Are multiple embryos giving us too much of a good thing?
by Stacy Pigott
Back in 2000, several breeders from the cutting horse industry sued the American Quarter Horse Association. You probably remember the
lawsuit—it dragged on for two years and in the end, forever changed the Quarter Horse industry as we know it. It was the lawsuit that opened the doors for the registration of multiple embryos from a single mare in a single breeding season.
At the time, I was working for QuarterWeek Magazine in California. I interviewed many people
in the racing industry—leading breeders such as “Scoop” Vessels and leading horsemen such as
Blane Schvaneveldt. I talked to people in Texas and California and Oklahoma and New Mexico. I asked them what they thought. Their answers surprised me.
One-hundred percent, across the board, everyone was against the rule change. No one wanted multiple embryos to be able to be registered and, therefore, able to race.
But the rule did change, and mares now had “crops” of foals...a term formerly reserved for stal- lions. Breeders approached the situation cautiously, and in the beginning, it seemed only the best mares were selected to produce multiple foals.
But as is the case when money is involved, the utopian theory of only the best mares being allowed to produce multiple foals soon gave way to an over- abundance of mares having crops of foals each year. Breeders—many of them the same breeders who were dead set against the idea in the first place—were now building herds of recipient mares and sharpening their knowledge of embryo transfer. They weren’t being hypocritical, they were simply being smart busi- nessmen. If everyone else was going to take advantage of the ability to produce, register and sell more than one foal per mare per year, they needed to be doing it to. In most cases, it was simply a matter of not letting the competition get the upper hand.
Since then, the industry has moved on to debate other breeding technologies such as frozen semen and cloning. Multiple embryos have become common- place...and yet it is an issue that continues to domi- nate discussions at horse sales. It’s a well-worn refrain: Multiple embryos are killing our industry.
As the 2011 sales season wrapped up with increases at nearly every major yearling sale in every category, I couldn’t help but think about that assump- tion—multiple embryos are ruining our industry. The Heritage Place Yearling Sale was topped by a
$435,000 colt. The Ruidoso Select Yearling Sale sold its highest-priced yearling filly ever.
One was a multiple embryo, one was not.
So what’s the truth? Are multiple embryos giving us too much of a good thing? Would the Heritage Place highest-seller have brought more money if
there wasn’t a full brother entered later in the same sale? Would the breeder of the highest-selling filly
at Ruidoso made more money by selling multiples instead of just one? These are no answers to questions such as these...just raw speculation.
In an effort to bring a little more clarity to the topic of multiples at yearling sales, Speedhorse took a look at the mares that produced multiple embryos in 2010 and also had at least one yearling consigned to one of the major yearling sales in 2011. You can find the results on page 25.
Now I am not an economics major by any means—I’m pretty sure I barely passed that class
in college—so I’m not going to draw any massive conclusions about whether or not multiple embryos are killing our industry based on one study of one year’s worth of sales results. But the results are interesting, to say the least. Mares who couldn’t break their maiden producing multiples in their first crop. Multiples selling for $2,000 or less—an amount not even close to covering expenses on the embryo trans- fer, stud fee, mare care, recipient mare, and raising that foal to be a sale yearling. And mares producing multiples that sell for six figures time and time again. Mares and their daughters—sometimes three genera- tions deep—all producing multiples in the same year.
Like the horsemen I interviewed more than a decade ago, I oppose the multiple embryos rule. I don’t think it’s good for the industry. I don’t think it’s good for the horses. And I sure don’t think it’s good for the future of the racing American Quarter Horse.
So while this is the first Speedhorse study of multiple embryos at the yearling sales, it might not be the last. Ideally, a massive, multi-year study would be under- taken that would compare sales prices and breeding numbers before the rule change and after the rule change. Taking into account economic variations, we would then have a better idea of just how the industry has changed—for better or for worse—since the intro- duction of multiple embryos. This year marks the 10th year since the rule was changed. All speculation aside, one thing is for certain...like them or not, multiple embryos are here to stay.
10 SPEEDHORSE, January 6, 2012
UNDER WRAPS