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It's Time: The story of preparing for the upcoming breeding season

December 15, 2025 • Kris Hiney, Reed Holyoak • Season 7 • Episode 154

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In this wide ranging episode, Dr. Reed Holyoak, theriogenologist with Oklahoma State University College of Veterinary Medicine, discusses preparing for the breeding season. But we go way beyond turn the lights on to discussing microbiome, genetics and uterine biopsies. Join us for this episode where even experienced breeders can gain new insight!

Nutritional considerations for broodmares

Reproductive management of the mare

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Kris Hiney: Welcome to Extension Horses Tack Box Talk series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney with Oklahoma State University.

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Kris Hiney: And today, we're going to be talking about, kind of, prepping for the breeding season, and talking about some fun stories of getting mares ready to be bred. So, with us today is Dr. Reed Holyoak, who is a theriogenologist.

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Kris Hiney: with, our College of Veterinary Medicine right here at Oklahoma State. So, welcome, Dr. Holyoak!

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Kris Hiney: Great to be here, thank you. So, are we too early, December, to be talking about breeding season, or are we too late?

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Kris Hiney: we're actually right on time. Depends on what the mare, that you have that you're trying to get ready to breed. If she's young, and…

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Kris Hiney: normal, in all respects, and haven't… hasn't had a foal yet, then yeah, we're a little early. But if she's a little bit older.

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Kris Hiney: Or sub-fertile, that didn't… she didn't get pregnant last year, then…

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Kris Hiney: And we're right on time. We need to get moving right now. So we need to figure out what might be going on, or what extra help she may need. Right. And so now would be the time to do a full breeding soundness exam. Also, now is the time that if

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Kris Hiney: you want to have her foaling earlier in the year, depending on the breed registry, is when their official birth date is. You might want to have her foaling earlier than in the year than what nature wants.

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Kris Hiney: Then you need to put her under lights, because it takes about 60 days,

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Kris Hiney: For the mayor to come out of what's now.

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Kris Hiney: Would be the fall and winter.

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Kris Hiney: an estrus period, where she's not cycling normally to where you want her cycling and everything ready to be bred. So, for example, if you want to have her ready to go into the breeding… her breeding season.

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Kris Hiney: in the middle of February, then the middle of December, which is real close, is when she needs to go under, yeah, need to go under lights, yeah. So, so for people that aren't worried about, having an early baby, because there's… depending on the type of event you do, right, it's not that important, or it's incredibly important. Yes. So if you… if you don't need an early baby, don't worry about it. But if we need an early baby, or we've got these sub-fertile

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Kris Hiney: So let me ask you, like, the lights, have you guys used the little, the little hoods that shine the light? Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: They're little hoods with a little blue light that's… all you need is to have it over one eye, so that's what they have. And they work quite well, they're expensive.

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Kris Hiney: Aren't they always? So, are you telling me a light bulb is cheaper than a little horse hat? Yes, they are. The difference is, is that they need to be stalled then in the evening and at night. So, what you want, if you go the cheap route, like.

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Kris Hiney: like I would do, then they need to be brought up.

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Kris Hiney: You bring them out of the pasture, give them a little feed, and put them in a box stall.

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Kris Hiney: And then turn the lights on, okay? And…

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Kris Hiney: We have an automatic timer that turns ours off at about 11 o'clock.

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Kris Hiney: So, you want the daylights to be in the neighborhood of 14 to 16 hours. So, what you're doing is the lights come on.

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Kris Hiney: Around 5 o'clock, and then go off around 11 o'clock, and that's… and that's fine. The key there is that you can't have any place in that box stall where it's dark, or she'll put her head in the dark.

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Kris Hiney: and go to sleep. So, everywhere, every corner, you need to be able to read a newspaper, like.

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Kris Hiney: a size 12 font, and then… Now, does it matter how old you are on reading that newspaper? Because I've found… Now you, now you're making me feel that. They can't see, but you can, my gray hair. Yeah, no.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, you might need to put your readers on today.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, so we can do it the cheap way with lights on in the stall, we can use the hood, and, you know, I definitely, in Oklahoma, we've got a lot of these larger recent birds, where they almost have, like, stadium lighting on a big outdoor pen of mare, so that's what they're doing. Right, correct. They're bringing them up. Very good. Okay, so now's the time to start doing that.

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Kris Hiney: Right? What about this whole breeding soundness exam for our mares that are tricksy? What are they looking for? Okay, so…

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Kris Hiney: The most important aspect that you're doing there would be to do a full examination of her external and internal reproductive tract.

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Kris Hiney: So you're looking to make sure that her confirmation is right, that…

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Kris Hiney: She doesn't have any age-related abnormalities that maybe tilt her vulva to where she'd have fecal contamination.

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Kris Hiney: That's the major thing on the external, genitalia. Internally, you…

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Kris Hiney: We combined palpation with ultrasound and ultrasoundographic examination. You're looking at,

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Kris Hiney: The ecotexture of how… how the uterus and ovaries look with ultrasound.

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Kris Hiney: Especially look for fluid, abnormal edema. Those all are indicative of a problem, okay? So if she has fluid, you need to find out why.

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Kris Hiney: If she's an older mare that's tilted, then when she urinates, it might run both directions, and so that fluid might be urine, which is not good.

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Kris Hiney: Or she just has a low-grade infection, and that inflammation creates fluid in there, and then we need to deal with it, yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, so you're looking for the presence of a fluid, and then I assume if there is, are you looking at bacteria presence? Do we do some other things? Great, that's a great question. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So, if there's fluid, then we're going to do three things. One, we're going to take a culture and see if there's,

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Kris Hiney: You know, one major bacteria type that's… that grows.

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Kris Hiney: Two, we're going to look for cytology and see if there are pus-type cells, neutrophils, and the other very important aspect would be endometrial

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Kris Hiney: biopsy, so a biopsy of the lining of the uterus to see what that health looks like, if it's just inflammatory cells, or if there's scarring, because the difference is quite…

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Kris Hiney: significant when it comes to whether she will be able to carry a full deter. And how much does that biopsy score change? Is it just age-related, or is it that something else was happening with that mare that caused, kind of…

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Kris Hiney: Oh, another great question. Okay,

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Kris Hiney: A lot of people think that pregnancy is an abnormal event. Actually, in all the species that we deal with in veterinary medicine, pregnancy is the state of normalcy, and it actually helps the uterus stay healthy, which is kind of interesting. And so that's the same with the mare. If she, has been

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Kris Hiney: Pregnant repeatedly, other than the stretching that can't… that occur, but as far as the lining of her uterus keeps it healthy.

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Kris Hiney: So, over time, if this mare is greater than 18 years of age, even if she's a maiden, she could have changes of her lining of her uterus that are detrimental to her carrying a folded term.

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Kris Hiney: If, just over time, she gets…

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Kris Hiney: repeated breeding induced endometritis, or an infection in her uterus because of what's carried in it during breeding, and she has a low-grade infection that can go one of two ways. One is just inflammatory cells that we can deal with.

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Kris Hiney: Or she starts to develop scar tissue around her endometrial glands. So the glands within the lining of the uterus help maintain the pregnancy. That's also where placentation occurs into those glands. And so, if they're scarred in, then

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Kris Hiney: the placenta can't develop like it needs to, which is another unique thing about the mare, is the type of placentation she has. So those are the things we look at, and then can say.

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Kris Hiney: Give a prognosis as to whether she can carry a foal all the way to term or not.

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Kris Hiney: And you, as a theriogenologist, and maybe we should say that's a reproduction specialist, so… Yeah, long word for it. So, but it's probably not that uncommon, though, that horse owners, like, they've had the favorite mare, and they've, you know, showed on her, or…

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Kris Hiney: whatever they do with her, and now she's getting to be 16, 17, they're like.

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Kris Hiney: We really want a baby from this really nice mayor. I mean, and that's a harder…

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Kris Hiney: deal, right, than, say, in a 5-year-old mare. Right, very different. I don't want to be too anthropomorphic, but…

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Kris Hiney: older females in any species can have… start having difficulties. In the mare, it's that 17, 18 is where they really make a major change, in not only in the lining of the uterus, but also in the vasculature of the uterus, it starts changing.

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Kris Hiney: And so, yeah, you start to have an uphill battle when they cross that line between 16, 17, heading toward 18 years old. So, in maintaining pregnancy, and… so now I'm going to ask a question I honestly don't know the answer to.

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Kris Hiney: But, like, so, with humans, then they start worrying, like, genetic testing and that of embryos for women that are using assisted services. Do people ever do that on the horses with an older mare, to be like, is this a viable… Okay, oh, that's a great question.

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Kris Hiney: It's not quite as dramatic in the mare as it is in the human.

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Kris Hiney: But it is there. The older the mare gets, the older her eggs become. And so over time, it's not necessarily going to have a genetic defect like a trisomy 21 situation.

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Kris Hiney: What you are going to have are changes within the genetic code that keeps her from…

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Kris Hiney: That pregnancy from developing.

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Kris Hiney: not all the way to term, but she might have a pregnancy that last 14, 21 days, and then it stops. So, it's more early on… early embryonic death.

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Kris Hiney: And not so much, a genetic mutation that goes all the way to foaling. So, as a specialist, then how would you know, like, is it the uterus's ability to support the embryo, or the embryo itself? Like, how would you know? Okay, that's another great question. That's some great questions.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, there is some work, it's now… shoot.

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Kris Hiney: 30-some years old, but Dr. Gordon Woods looked at that, where he took,

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Kris Hiney: flushed embryos out of older mares, and put those embryos into young, healthy mares, and young

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Kris Hiney: healthy mare embryos into older mares that had as close to normal of an endometrial score, biopsy score. And what they found was that, young embryos from

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I should have said the young mare's embryos into older mares that had healthy uterus.

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Kris Hiney: they… they matured and went on to pregnancy just fine. It was the older mare's embryos going into young, healthy mare's uterus that, over time would have a more… higher incidence of early embryonic loss, and so therefore, they could separate out

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Kris Hiney: The uterine environment from the embryo itself.

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Kris Hiney: So, if… if they took,

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Kris Hiney: young mare embryos and put them into the uterus of an older mare that had a poor score, endometrial biopsy score, then those… those mares would become pregnant, but the

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Kris Hiney: the risk of them losing the pregnancy when it started to develop placenta, then they started losing those pregnancies, and so they could… they could get them pregnant, hold them pregnant, but then when

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Kris Hiney: when the,

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Kris Hiney: energy from the uterus needed to support that pregnancy as it grew, then that's when you start seeing embryonic loss, or fetal loss. So then it's really, it's both fronts for that older mare. So, really, and I guess this is a resource question, because not everybody has the same resources. Like, if you have that really good mare.

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Kris Hiney: now they're doing more, like, freezing embryos and things like that… Right. Yeah, the assisted reproductive technologies have really come up, except for in the thoroughbred, right? The thoroughbreds are… They like history. Yeah, they… tradition, right? And so, that's live cover.

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Kris Hiney: And, no…

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Kris Hiney: oocyte aspiration, or in vitro fertilization, or anything like that in the thoroughbreds, but in the cornivorce industry, which is predominant in Oklahoma, there are… there are a lot more avenues that we can…

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Kris Hiney: Use for these older mares.

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Kris Hiney: That, not available for the thoroughbred breed. Interesting. Okay. So, so our uterine biopsy, I have a little story, and then I'm sure you've got lots of stories. My stories are much smaller. But we had an older mare that was donated to us when I actually did this stuff.

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Kris Hiney: And so, she had had a…

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Kris Hiney: I think that she was barren, and so did a uterine biopsy, and I think she came back, like, a 2B. Yeah. So there's, like, 1, 2A, 2B, and 3. So 3's bad. 3's bad. But she was 2B, so, right, I can't remember, was that, like, 30 to 50% chance of pregnancy? Yeah, pretty close, yeah. I'm trying to remember all this. Yeah, you're good. So we were like, well, these aren't really great odds, but when we brought her, she had a double ovulation. Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Like, we just doubled our percent on… so we did get a baby from her. And didn't have to worry about twins, because…

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. Like, literally worked out pretty well. That's great. So sometimes it still works out. That's right. That's my little story. Yeah, and that's… that's great. So, back to the score that you perfectly said. So, we get a lot of mares, older mares, that'll be a 2A or a 2B. 2A…

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Kris Hiney: really quite normal.

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Kris Hiney: And often those are more associated with inflammation, and not so much with scarring, and so we can treat that uterus and reduce the inflammation, and get her pregnant, and she can hold that pregnancy. Even at 2B, if…

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Kris Hiney: If it's not significant in this scoring… scarring, and…

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Kris Hiney: more in the inflammation, we can clear those mares out. There are a lot of mares in Oklahoma that have a 2B that are pregnant and carry that folded term.

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Kris Hiney: So, as long as the placenta can develop and fuel that pregnancy, then we're okay.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, so there's still hope. And if they're a 3, then we're really talking about putting her embryo in somebody else, right? Yeah, if it's a 3, and based on endometrial scarring or fibrosis, then you're way better off

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Kris Hiney: Going with embryo transfer and transferring that embryo. Now, recognizing the older she gets.

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Kris Hiney: The higher it's going to be that she could have an early embryonic death.

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Kris Hiney: And that… those are the odds, but if you have an older mare that's of great value to you, either emotionally or financially, then it's worth

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Kris Hiney: doing assisted reproductive technologies, yeah. Okay. Well, I might have got us a little sidetracked from our… No, no, you're good. Good. Yeah. So, so we're… we got our breeding sinus exam done, we kind of know what's ahead of us, whether the mare needs,

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Kris Hiney: treatment, or kind of what cleaner up, as we would say. So, all of that is what we start thinking about now. Right. Okay, and then what's the next thing on our list? Well, it still depends on what you found in the breeding soundness exam. For example, we had a mare come in yesterday. Now, this is a thoroughbred mare.

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Kris Hiney: Getting ready, on…

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Kris Hiney: her… whatever she needs to get her ready to be sent to Kentucky for… for breeding, and there's going to be live cover. Well, on this mare, she had some,

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Kris Hiney: uterine cysts. So, cysts that develop in the… in the uterus. There are two types. One is glandular, and one is more lymph… the lymph vessels swell, and… and…

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Kris Hiney: break through and become quite large. The endometrial

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Kris Hiney: CIS, we can kind of deal with, as long as…

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Kris Hiney: The scarring's not all the way to a 3. If it's these lymphatic cysts that hang in there and quite large, then they can impede

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Kris Hiney: The movement of the embryo.

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Kris Hiney: Now, in other species, the embryo doesn't move very far. For example, in cattle, it stay on the same side as that they ovulated on, and it will develop a placenta in that uterine horn. In the mare, that embryo needs to move

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Kris Hiney: All the way through the uterus, at least 80% of the uterus, it needs to be able to move, and so if you have a really large disc, and that embryo can't move.

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Kris Hiney: It… it sends a signal to the… to the muscle layer within the uterus and allows

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Kris Hiney: the muscles of the uterus to push it along all the way through, right? So if there's a large cyst, it gets to that spot.

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Kris Hiney: And can't get past. In that situation, you can get her pregnant, but she doesn't recognize she's pregnant because that signal from the embryo hasn't covered her whole uterus. And so in that situation, then, the recommendation from, the

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Kris Hiney: the stallion owners and breeding managers in Kentucky or Oklahoma or wherever, say, we want those cysts taken out. So we can go in with laser and just laser

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Kris Hiney: ablate, cut those off. Make them go away. Right. So, but this particular mare, when we got in there, not only did she have cysts.

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Kris Hiney: But she also had an infection, so we could see, pest type.

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Kris Hiney: As a microscopic? Great, sorry. Yeah, we go with it, yeah, with a hysteroscope or an endoscope, and take a look around, right? And then, if… if she had been normal, then we'd have run a laser fiber in and taken that… those cysts out.

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Kris Hiney: But in her case, if she was too infected, we start

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Kris Hiney: cutting into the lining of the uterus with a bunch of infection around, not… not wise. And so, okay, put the brakes on, we're going to clean her up, and then we'll make an evaluation of… of, how to take these cysts. So, yeah.

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Kris Hiney: So, it just depends. Then, if you get everything… everything right, clean her up and take the cysts out.

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Kris Hiney: We'll have her ready to go to Kentucky in probably a couple weeks. Okay, so the healing, so I assume antibiotics, so interuterine… It depends, it depends, yeah, it depends on what we're dealing with. We send a culture out, see what

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Kris Hiney: what comes back?

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Kris Hiney: I prefer systemic antibiotics. I don't like interuterine antibiotics, and that's because of some of the research that we've done here. We know that there are normal commensal bacteria that live in the uterus.

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Kris Hiney: You know, the dogma used to be that the uterus was sterile, the vaginal vault had bacteria, but the uterus is sterile? No.

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Kris Hiney: That's work that we've done here. Actually, my… I collaborate with Dr. Udea da Silva in your department, and he's been a wonderful collaborator, and we've established that there are normal commensal bacteria that live in the uterus, just like

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Kris Hiney: And mucosal, yeah, everywhere. Everywhere. And so… so… which is interesting, when we first tried to publish that, we got pushed back. Oh, no, the uterus is sterile. I go, no, it's not sterile. And finally, finally they caught up with where we were. We were a little bit ahead of the game, and so…

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Kris Hiney: But…

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Kris Hiney: So I don't like… long story, I don't like interuterine antibiotics because I don't know what we're doing to the normal bacteria in there. But if we go systemic, and it comes up

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Kris Hiney: through the vasculature to the endometrium and hit those deeper crypts in the glands where we really need it. Instead of washing around inside the lumen of the uterus, it seems to do a little bit better, at least in my hands, yeah. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: And so, once… once we have that cleared, that infection cleared, and reestablish a normal, bacterial population, then she's ready to be bred.

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Kris Hiney: So, question on that, because I know once we start, talking about bacteria.

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Kris Hiney: Then there's always all of the prebiotic, probiotic, postbiotic. Is that ever part of the conversation on the reproductive side? They're getting more and more, yeah.

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Kris Hiney: we're not… we're not smart enough yet to know exactly what we're doing. That's my feeling, right? And I've been… I've been dealing with this for almost two decades, but

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Kris Hiney: For example, if we have a mare that we…

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Kris Hiney: no matter what we do, seems that she always comes back with a, you know, either culturing a strep, equisoepidemicus, or an E. coli, or Klebsiella, and we do everything that we can to treat her, but she comes back. Then I'll take, fluid.

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Kris Hiney: But… A liter of, lactated ringers into a normal mare.

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Kris Hiney: Right?

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Kris Hiney: And then take that out of her and put it into our infected mare, and try to reestablish that microbiome.

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Kris Hiney: Okay. So it's no different than, like, a fecal transplant, then? Yeah, it's almost identical, yeah. And we're trying to… it's called transphenation.

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Kris Hiney: And trying to transphonate, like, the fauna, the bacteria from a normal mare, and try to reestablish

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Kris Hiney: It was called a eubiosis, but a normal

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Kris Hiney: bacterial population. And the greater diversity, which we found in our research, the greater diversity in the different bacteria that are there, the healthier that uterus is.

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Kris Hiney: Interesting, huh? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I do more on the nutrition side with… But it's the same, but we're finding that nutrition, that's really getting well established. Nutrition has an influence on all of the mucosal microbiota, right?

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Kris Hiney: Fancy word for the normal bacteria that live on the mucosal linings, and it doesn't make any difference whether what you eat has an impact on your mouth.

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Kris Hiney: The bacteria that normally live in your mouth, bacteria that normally live in the vaginal vault or in the uterus, they all are influenced by diet, and so…

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Kris Hiney: why not? Why not fix the diet as well as, what we're doing inside the uterus itself? Yeah, kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, although I would… I would just assume, like, the diet of mares is not going to be as…

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Kris Hiney: varied options of when we talk about people or dogs, so I'll pull my dogs back in here, right? Because we can swing to wild differences in body compositions. Okay, you brought the dog up.

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Kris Hiney: But, you know, but, you know, raw diets.

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Kris Hiney: I do know, because I did that research. The raw diet will have an influence on fertility, a significant… I didn't know that. Raw diets in the canine will have a direct impact on our ability to…

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Kris Hiney: to get a female pregnant. So, if…

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Kris Hiney: if they come in with a history of subfertility or infertility, the first thing I ask is, what's the diet? And is it a raw diet? If it is a raw diet.

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Kris Hiney: what part? You know, is it chicken? How old is that chicken? Is it hamburger? How old is that hamburger? What are you doing with it? So, what we're finding is that if it's…

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Kris Hiney: If it's a raw diet, it can be seeding that reproductive tract with an abnormal

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Kris Hiney: bacterial type, and we cannot get her pregnant. Get her off of that raw diet, and we can get her pregnant. Now, in the mare.

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Kris Hiney: Diet has a huge impact, alright?

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Kris Hiney: On… on the… the microbiome.

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Kris Hiney: We don't know yet just how much of an influence it has

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Kris Hiney: On fertility, but there are some feed additives.

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Kris Hiney: that are being sold, that are specific to increase fertility. One of the things that Dr. Da Silva and I and our graduate students

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Kris Hiney: have done is we looked at the micro… the uterine and vaginal, but especially the uterine microbiome in mares, specifically from Oklahoma.

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Kris Hiney: From mayors in Louisiana.

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Kris Hiney: And mares that came in, embryo recipient mares that came in from our… our region, Texas, North Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, okay? And…

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Kris Hiney: also from Australia.

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Kris Hiney: Oh, wow. We had some collaborators in Australia. We looked at the microbiome of all the… those three different groups of… actually four different groups of mares, and that there's a core microbiome that

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Kris Hiney: All of those mayors had, bud.

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Kris Hiney: That, it was the same.

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Kris Hiney: But it was all the other bacterial types that were living in those mares that were… were different, and if…

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Kris Hiney: If mares came in, for example, the embryo recipient mares, if they had gone through,

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Kris Hiney: a horse buyer that brought them in and gave them all antibiotics. It changed their… it had an impact on… so these are systemic antibiotics, intermuscular antibiotics, that had an impact

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Kris Hiney: On the diversity within their… their uterus, and so that's… that all then tells me that…

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Kris Hiney: There's this group of normal bacteria that mares, no matter where they are, will have.

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Kris Hiney: So… What can we do to… to help?

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Kris Hiney: grow that into a normal environment, that's… that's kind of where we are. That's the next steps, and figure out how to… how to get that back to Eubiosis. There you go! Great work, yeah, very good. Okay, well, now we've really ranged of ours. But those are all things that we need to be, thinking of, because if you…

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Kris Hiney: If you dramatically change the diet on these mares, you know that you're going to have any impact.

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Kris Hiney: For example, we know that you dramatically changed the diet, not so much that they found her, but you go to a corn-based diet.

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Kris Hiney: is going to have an influence not only on their feet, but also on their gut microbiome, which has an impact on their fetus. It's got to have an impact on the reproductive tract. Interesting. Yeah. So now there's maybe more hope, or at least more understanding for some of these sub-fertile horses, because…

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Kris Hiney: Our knowledge is a little deeper. It's getting better. What to look for. It's getting better, yeah. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, well, I don't even know where we go next. Well, the next thing… the next question is, okay, so we get her pregnant, right?

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Kris Hiney: Will she maintain that… that pregnancy? And what can we do to help her maintain that pregnancy? If we… if we know what her uterine health was at the beginning.

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Kris Hiney: And we got her pregnant, and she… Had a score that wasn't.

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Kris Hiney: so scarred in that she's going to lose that pregnancy at 6 or 9 months, then what do we do to help her? Well, diet. Body condition score, right? Proper,

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Kris Hiney: Immunizations, get the right vaccine at the right time, okay? And then, of course, it's biosecurity.

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Kris Hiney: Especially if they're innocent, you know, lately, with the equine herpes, yeah. And breeders are probably more familiar with, herpes virus, because that's something we routinely are a little bit more stringent on in the pregnant mare. Well.

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Kris Hiney: We hope so, right? Well, I hope so. Yeah, because you need to make sure that you vaccinate them with a

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Kris Hiney: with a killed virus vaccine, so like a pneumobort K or something like that, and the K stands for killed, viruses to help them be protected, but that won't…

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Kris Hiney: That's not, you know, a solid wall that's going to keep the viruses away from them. What it does is help their immunity, but if they get overwhelmed with

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Kris Hiney: exposure to a horse that's come from an event or off the track that is shedding a lot of herpes virus, then it can overwhelm that vaccination, and she could contract a disease in a board. And so.

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Kris Hiney: it's a multi-level type of protection. You don't let nose-to-nose contact, or you don't, have horses coming in and out in the same tack, or this… whatever, equipment that you have, you don't…

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Kris Hiney: carry those over and use those on… on your pregnant mares, because then that could be a carrier of the virus, right? Yeah. And that's why I often, like, I guess on the bigger scale ones, the breeding horses are treated kind of very differently than the…

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Kris Hiney: show horses, like, they tend to live, like, they're over here, and travel… Yeah, if you have a facility that allows you to separate them.

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Kris Hiney: But if you don't, if you're a small breeder and small eventer, and you don't have a lot of space, then you just need to be smarter on how you handle your biosecurity.

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Kris Hiney: Which everybody should be nice and updated on, right? Right. I would bet…

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Kris Hiney: There's been a lot of education going on. And that is not our focus today. We already did, did one on the EHM operation. Oh, good, good. So yeah, we don't have to go down that road so much. Hopefully not, people will remember, so… All right, so then I guess the next question is, what can we do, let's say.

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Kris Hiney: We've talked about getting a mare pregnant. Now we have a pregnant mare, and what… what can we do to get ready for or watch for?

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Kris Hiney: Her, end of… end of gestation, what are we going to watch for? What do we need to do? And… and how worried we can be, or how calm we can be. It really depends, right? And when do you… when do you call your veterinarian in, either beforehand.

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Kris Hiney: Or… If there's a problem with the birthing process, when do we… when do we call for help?

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Kris Hiney: What can we do by ourselves?

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Kris Hiney: Right? And that probably depends on people's comfort level. Absolutely, comfort level and skill. Yeah. What you've experienced, right? If… if…

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Kris Hiney: Like some of us, you grew up around this from the time you're a little kid, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect, right, and what to watch for.

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Kris Hiney: I remember as a little boy, you know, I was 8 years old when Dad started sending me out to ride through the cattle, right? And of course, you're going to watch the mares, too, because

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Kris Hiney: We ran our… our brood mirrors in the same big pastures as the cows, and so you… if they…

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Kris Hiney: calving and foaling at about the same time. Our cows usually fold… are calved a little bit before our mares fold, but…

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Kris Hiney: there was some overlap. And so you watch. You watch for…

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Kris Hiney: those signs of when they're getting closer, right? And it's very similar to what happens in the mare, a little more subtle than in the cow. Cows are pretty obvious when they get ready to… to calve.

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Kris Hiney: What you see, but this is very similar.

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Kris Hiney: And so.

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Kris Hiney: If you're really worried about the mare, or if you just want that level of comfort, then somewhere around that 10-month mark, then you have your veterinarian come out, and they can

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Kris Hiney: measure the thickness of the placenta and the uterus. You can look at clarity of the different fluids that are associated with that pregnancy and the activity of the foal.

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Kris Hiney: And say, okay, we're normal, everything looks good, or I'm a little bit worried, so we're gonna, you know, bring her up and watch her a little closer. So, yeah, there are different things that we can watch.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, so what… what would you… so, for somebody that's like, okay, I want to try to do it myself, what kind of skill set should they probably have? Is it just a calm demeanor? Well, that's probably… probably the most important thing is, yeah.

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Kris Hiney: A good working relationship with your veterinarian, so that, the client and,

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Kris Hiney: veterinary relationships are really important. I trust my clients, and I… and if they have questions, I want to answer them to where I can

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Kris Hiney: assess what they know, and augment that knowledge where I feel like it needs to be built up, and then we can go from there. Then they can get ahold of me and ask me whatever questions we need, but the most important thing is to just watch and be observant, alright? You want to make sure that she maintains her body condition.

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Kris Hiney: You don't want to get her too fat, so you don't overfeed her, but you definitely don't want her thin.

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Kris Hiney: If she's too thin, then those muscles don't work well.

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Kris Hiney: Especially the uterus, and so then you have a little bit of a problem.

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Kris Hiney: If you're… if you have breeders out there that, are used to cattle, some of the things that happen in cattle usually don't happen in the mare.

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Kris Hiney: In cows, you have EPDs, expected progeny differences, and you want to make sure you… on… on smaller cattle or younger cattle, you… you breed to a low breeding… a low halving weight.

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Kris Hiney: bull, right? You don't worry about that in the mirror. It's just… the size of her uterus dictates the size of the foal, right? Also, you don't have nearly the number of, positional,

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Kris Hiney: birthing problems, dystocia, right? Because they… during their pregnancy,

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Kris Hiney: One of the uterine horns actually

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Kris Hiney: Captures the hind legs of… of the foal.

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Kris Hiney: And so, it's almost always going to be coming out front legs and head first.

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Kris Hiney: And so that's not as big a deal as it is in cattle. And so you watch for that, that you want to, as the mare gets closer to

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Kris Hiney: To folding, she's going to start sinking. Her tail head is going to start, looking a little more prominent, and the musculature around the tail head gets very soft.

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Kris Hiney: Right? So… Two weeks before she falls, you touch the muscles associated with their tail head and their firm.

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Kris Hiney: But the closer she gets to folding, the more jiggly they get. It's almost like there's jello in there, right? You watch for mammary gland development.

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Kris Hiney: And her udder is going to start filling up, right? And then it's really close to falling that she's going to start dripping a little bit of colostrum, and you know that then.

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Kris Hiney: Within probably that night, she's going to fall. Some of the things that, some breeders do, we'll get a kit that measures, milk calcium.

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Kris Hiney: And… and if it goes up over 200 parts per million, you know, there's a 90% chance that she's going to fall within the next 48 hours. If it's up over 400, there's a greater than 95% chance she's going to fall at night. So those are… there are different things that you can do.

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Kris Hiney: to watch and monitor that… that mare, okay? Probably the big thing on the mare is that,

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Kris Hiney: Foaling. Partition is more of an explosive event than it is in cattle.

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Kris Hiney: Cattle, they can kind of take their time in the mirror when she lays down to fall.

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Kris Hiney: Things are happening, right?

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Kris Hiney: And, some of the wrecks that, that I've seen are,

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Kris Hiney: mares that have had a Kaslix procedure, and her vulva has been sutured shut, and somebody didn't check that and open that up, and then you can have some pretty bad…

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Kris Hiney: Vulvar tears and lacerations, or it re-diverts the…

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Kris Hiney: or diverts the foal's foot up through the roof of the vaginal vault and into the rectum, you can have a rectal vaginal tear. Those are all things that…

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Kris Hiney: That, you need to be aware of. They're… they're not real common, but they are… they occur enough to where it's kind of spooky.

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Kris Hiney: So… If, you know, if someone is really into this and has, you know, closed-circuit

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Kris Hiney: Television on the stalls, you can watch.

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Kris Hiney: And go out and help.

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Kris Hiney: Those, those type of, birthing issues, not as common. The most common, dystocia, most common birth problem is a trapped elbow.

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Kris Hiney: Alright?

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Kris Hiney: Like, calves, and… Well, puppies can go…

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Kris Hiney: head first, or front… or front feet and head first, or back legs first, but in cattle and… and horses, you want to see both front feet, the toes up and the bottom of the feet down, all right? And then resting between, the front legs should be the nose.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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Kris Hiney: And one… one foot should be slightly in front of the other, so you have the leading… leading hoof, and then the second one should be about at the level of the pattern. If it's back, back on the cannon a little bit.

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Kris Hiney: Then you got… you have a problem.

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Kris Hiney: That would be a trapped elbow, but it's easy. It's easy to fix.

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Kris Hiney: All you do is… is hold on to the leg that's coming out, and the next contraction, you just pull on that leg that's a little bit back, and you'll feel it pop, and that…

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Kris Hiney: Then changes the width of the shoulders, right, as it's entering the birth canal, and lets it to be streamlined. And then…

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Kris Hiney: You just help it come out on the next contraction. There she comes. Yeah. So, on… on folds, they are actually normally laying upside down within the uterus, so their back is against the bottom of the mom's belly, okay? And as… as she folds up, that…

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Kris Hiney: Bull will rotate up to where its back is up against her backbone, so it will rotate up.

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Kris Hiney: Sometimes you can see them where they're kind of halfway, okay? And so in that situation, then you just help them come up to…

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Kris Hiney: upright at about a 45 degree angle. So I've had students call and, you know, and we have closer to TV with the

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Kris Hiney: the mares that we fold for clients out at the Veterinary Medicine Ranch, and so I'm seeing it on… on my… actually, on my cell phone, we… and we have a link with the post-circuit TV as I'm driving out there to…

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Kris Hiney: To help either a student or a resident, and I'll say, okay, you put your… your arm under one leg and up over its head, and

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Kris Hiney: It's a wrestling move, right? And it's called a half-nelson, the half-nelson, and just…

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Kris Hiney: put that foal upright, and then out they come. So yeah, it's kind of fun, but it's… it's not a huge panic if you can keep your head and… and…

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Kris Hiney: think about how that foal's supposed to be coming, and you're all right. Yeah. You can wrestle them out. Yeah, yeah, there you go!

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Kris Hiney: Hopefully that wasn't…

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Kris Hiney: hard to follow. If you can see it in your mind, you can figure out what you're doing, yeah. Yeah, but no, a dystocia can be pretty problematic. Oh, it can be a huge, huge problem, especially in those situations where, they're… they're captured,

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Kris Hiney: in their…

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Kris Hiney: differently, right? I've had them where one uterine horn captures the back legs, and the other uterine horn captures the front legs, and so…

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Kris Hiney: The mare is laying down, and she's really trying to fold, but…

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Kris Hiney: nothing's moving, so I've gone into where you palpate and feel the rib cage and the fetal heart, and they're coming sideways, and that's really a… really a tough one. Probably the

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Kris Hiney: the second…

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Kris Hiney: Most common, other than what I've already described, dystocia is if they have a head back.

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Kris Hiney: Or they catch their nose, either at the brim of the pelvis or on the side of the pelvis, and then it takes their head back. Those are a little harder,

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Kris Hiney: And in that… that situation, you want to have your…

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Kris Hiney: Veterinarian on… on speed dial, unless you have the arm and shoulder strength to… to get in there and straighten them out.

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Kris Hiney: I tell the veterinary students.

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Kris Hiney: You want to be get… get, really, really good at

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Kris Hiney: cow dystocia, if you want to fix a mare dystocia. Because cows, the pressure on your arm a lot lower in the cow. In the mare, you get your arm caught in there, and you think, okay, is my arm gonna break or not? Because I've had that, where my elbow got caught, and think.

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Kris Hiney: But I like milk, so my bones have good calcium. Because otherwise, there have been several times when I thought, oh, something's going to break.

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Kris Hiney: And it hasn't been my arm yet, so yeah. That's good, that's good. Career hazards! I wasn't know that the breaking of the bones was, part of the moment there. Yeah, but it's also part of the fun. It just, I love what I do.

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Kris Hiney: It's, delivering…

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Kris Hiney: delivering these, calves and foals and puppies just make life worthwhile, in my book, yeah. Alright, so now it's story time. What's your, like, favorite horse? We won't go do all the other species, because this is about horses. Yeah. What are some of your favorite horse

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Kris Hiney: repro stories. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: Oh, I'm… many, many.

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Kris Hiney: Probably the one that… that's probably… that… that means the most to me as being a theriogenologist here at Oklahoma State University is,

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Kris Hiney: Speaking of breeding soundness exams and mares that have fertility problems, had a…

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Kris Hiney: Client that had a beautiful young 5-year-old mare that they had started breeding on as a 4-year-old.

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Kris Hiney: to a very specific stallion. And,

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Kris Hiney: They tried one breeding season and couldn't get her pregnant, so they brought her to us because we have a, you know.

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Kris Hiney: barren mare, program, so for sub-fertile mares. And on the breeding soundness exam, she was perfect. Everything was good.

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Kris Hiney: Cultured clean. Ultrasound exam was…

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Kris Hiney: Good, and she had good activity on her, ovaries,

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Kris Hiney: The biopsy score was, 1, which meant pristine.

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Kris Hiney: And so…

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Kris Hiney: We ordered semen on this stallion, and bred her, and right… timed the ovulation, and bred her.

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Kris Hiney: Within 12 hours of ovulation, everything was… we did everything right.

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Kris Hiney: But she didn't get pregnant.

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Kris Hiney: And so, going through the history with the owners, I suggested that maybe they try a different stallion. Sometimes.

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Kris Hiney: There's just, a mismatch, right?

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Kris Hiney: There's some incompatibility on the cell surface antigens, and so that would result in a really early embryonic loss, and so…

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Kris Hiney: they said, no, it's, this is the only stallion we want to breed this mare to. He said, alright, it's genetics, she has these genetics, and he has these, and this is the perfect. I said, okay, well, we'll try again.

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Kris Hiney: And, so we tried again, and again, followed her, and when she had a follicle that was the right size, and her cervix was softening, and the uterus had had edema when it needed to, everything was right. We bred her again right on time, and again, she didn't get

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Kris Hiney: pregnant, and I said, I really think you need to… need to change. Surely there's another stallion, option number two. And they go.

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Kris Hiney: No, we'll probably be a seller, and I said, well, why don't you donate it to us?

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Kris Hiney: So that was my first mare that we had donated into, our program.

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Kris Hiney: It was right after I took over out at the College of Veterinary Medicine Ranch.

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Kris Hiney: And, we had a stallion that had been donated out there, because when I took over, it was all thoroughbreds, and I…

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Kris Hiney: Talked to the dean and said, you know.

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Kris Hiney: the population in… the equine population in Oklahoma, thoroughbreds are great, but we have a lot more quarter horses, so for our

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Kris Hiney: Veterinary students that are going into the horse world in veterinary medicine really should be exposed to

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Kris Hiney: More on the courthouse side.

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Kris Hiney: And so, yeah, so then I was starting to…

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Kris Hiney: Trying to get some donations in. So we… they donated this little mare to us, and we had a stallion named Bart Bartender out there, and I love that horse, too. And,

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Kris Hiney: And sure enough, boom. First… first ovulation, first breeding, she got pregnant. So that's kind of fun. So that's a… to me, that's a… a very educational… it was educational for me, it was educational for the students, just to say, look at their history.

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Kris Hiney: And, just a simple change, and we had a baby. So, anyway, that's probably my favorite story. Because it was a nice, simple fix, and not one that people would think of, that just sometimes… They get so, so focused on… on one niche breeding that they…

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Kris Hiney: And I understand, I understand, but…

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Kris Hiney: it was something that we could move a little bit, and besides that, then we had that mare out at the Veterinary Medicine Ranch for,

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Kris Hiney: 20… a little bit over 20 years, and then she finally decided it was time to go to heaven, so… But she did her service and educated a lot of students. And actually, you know, we…

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Kris Hiney: we have a… kind of a horse… favorite horse cemetery out at the Veterinary Medicine Ranch, and she is right next to Bart. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, you're getting my… you're getting into my sentimental side, but yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Anyway. That's fantastic. That's kind of fun. So, I definitely appreciate your time with kind of talking us through some… some fun, cool stuff with Repro, getting, hopefully, people thinking about it, because now's the time. Certainly, styling selection, all that needs to be done,

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Kris Hiney: done pretty soon, and again, about those early babies. Yeah, the AQHA stallion

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Kris Hiney: Publication has been out for probably a month now, yeah, so… Main people. Yeah. Look it up.

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Kris Hiney: Well, no, I really, really, really appreciate, your time, and so we'll definitely link some information on nutritional care for broodmares, since we talked about that, with some of our information from Extension Horses. We have lots of educational resources on… on feeding, some other breeding decisions. Yeah, there's… you have, some good Extension publications on

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Kris Hiney: on, reading soundness exams, as well as,

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Kris Hiney: watching for folding and different things like that. I've seen your publications, so you are good. Yeah, so link them up. I will definitely do that. So, again, thank you very much, and this has been another episode of our Tech Box Talk for Stories with a Purpose.