Hilkens Denali

Our stallion facility is now located at 673 State Hwy 1, RD4, Cambridge from where we will offer the following services:
Stallion handling for natural service, semen collection, shipping, evaluation, freezing, storage, importing and exporting. stallion infertility diagnosis, colt castration and epididymal sperm recovery and freezing. We have Equitainers, dry shippers and liquid N2 tanks for hire to transport the semen to its destination. Your stallion can be kept in stables, yards or paddocks to suit your requirements.

When you make an appointment for your stallion, please ask us for the “Semen Request Form” and this needs to be filled in and returned to us BEFORE the stallion arrives.

Please make an appointment for the semen collection 24-48h prior to the date we need to ship the semen to the mare. In most cases, the appointment can be made on the day the mare is treated by the vet with Chorulon, Ovuplant or Deslorelin. We like to collect semen 3h before the scheduled time of flight departures, so please have all the flight or courier details ready at the time of booking.

For all semen collection requests please contact our office 07 827 9312

We will collect semen from your stallion using a “phantom mare”. This will maximise the safety of your stallion and our personnel. Most stallions will learn to mount this phantom after several training sessions. The higher his libido, the easier it will be to train him. We will collect the semen using an “artificial vagina (AV)” and then evaluate every sample for motility and sperm concentration.

For every ejaculate we assess the motility (total / progressive) and the concentration of sperm before shipping, freezing and after thawing. If you have any concerns about the fertility of your stallion we can also evaluate the sperm morphology (shape) and perform viability tests. Please let us know if you have any questions about your stallion’s fertility.

Chilled semen shipping containers

To maximise the fertility of shipped semen we will send a minimum of ONE BILLION sperm for each mare that needs to be inseminated. Upon delivery of the semen to the mare it is strongly recommended that she be inseminated with all of the semen provided. It will retain its fertility longer in the mare than in the Equitainer. Most (85%) of mares should ovulate within 48h of insemination. In some cases a second ejaculate will be required so it is important that a vet scans the mare again to confirm ovulation.

Before embarking upon a semen freezing programme it is important that you consider how many mares you would like semen for. This will help us work out how many ejaculates are needed and therefore the cost of your programme. Our semen collection centre will satisfy the criteria for MAF for exportation of horse semen and all resident stallions will be blood tested for Equine Viral Arteritis on the day they arrive at the centre and again 14 days after their last ejaculate.

The success of a stallion as a sire will be very dependent upon his semen quality. EquiBreed will freeze the semen at high concentrations to ensure that > 300 million motile sperm are provided in each dose. Only 70% of stallions have semen that freezes well and just because the semen looks good when it is either fresh or chilled, does not guarantee that it will freeze. Therefore, we recommend that we perform a “freeze test” at the start of your programme. As a general rule, older stallions (>14yo) and stallions that have not ejaculated frequently (“rusty loads”) will have poorer quality semen. If your stallion’s semen does not freeze well and the post thaw motility is <30% we do not recommend distributing it to outside mares, so please feel free to discuss his breeding options with us.

Insemination dose 8x0.5ml straws

How much semen will we need to freeze?

Usually we are able to freeze 2 – 8 doses of semen from each ejaculate. Each dose will contain > 300 million motile sperm and be frozen in 6-8 x 0.5ml straws. This will vary depending on the stallion’s age and the quality of his semen. If you are collecting semen from your stallion for shipping, you may have enough semen (if there is > 2 billion sperm in the ejaculate) to send half to the mare and to freeze the remaining half. We also recommend that you collect sufficient semen to provide 3 doses of sperm for each mare. It usually takes 1 – 2 weeks to collect sufficient semen for 10 mares.

If a 7yo stallion produces 9 billion sperm in each ejaculate then we should be able to freeze 9 doses of semen (post thaw motility 30%) per ejaculate. That would be enough for 3 mares (3 doses per mare). If we collected semen on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday we would have enough semen for 9 mares at the end of the week.

It may be possible that you could increase the efficiency of the use of your semen and instead of needing 8 straws per dose you may be able to use 2 straws per insemination. We do not recommend that you sell low doses of sperm to outside mares until you have adequate information on the fertility of your stallion in a low dose programme. Please contact us for further information.

We are pleased to announce the first foal born in New Zealand from frozen epididymal stallion sperm. EMILY ROSE was born on 5 February 2007. She has a Standardbred dam and a Thoroughbred sire. Her dam was inseminated by the hysteroscopic insemination method.

If your colt is > 2yo and you are considering gelding him, you may like to collect several ejaculates first before gelding him and then we can also recover sperm from his testicles (epididymis) just after he has been gelded.

We have new and improved methods for freezing epididymal sperm which should maximise its fertility after thawing. Please contact us for further information.

The gold standard for fertility is the ability to produce a pregnancy. We recommend that prior to selling your stallion’s semen that we inseminate 1 – 2 fertile mares for you. If you have brought your stallion to us for freezing we will offer this service at $250 per cycle (+ GST, drugs and grazing). We can test a high dose and also a low dose of sperm to help you maximise the use of the semen.

Please feel free to contact Lee Morris if you have further questions about your stallion and his fertility.

We can store your stallion's frozen semen at our facility and dispatch it for use in mares on centre or at another breeding establishment or veterinary clinic. To minimise shipping costs, we encourage mare owners to be organised and to order their frozen semen before their mare arrives at the breeding facility so that there are no delays. Please allow 3 working days for all semen dispatches and make all semen requests through our office 07 827 9312. To avoid transit problems, we prefer not to ship frozen semen over a weekend.