Area facility is approved for equine reproduction work

Equine Performance Vets at the Aiken Complex is the first and only facility in South Carolina approved for processing and exporting frozen semen and embryos to the European Union.

"We've done a lot of reproduction work in Aiken since I've been here - every year it's doubled and quadrupled - and now it's pretty busy during the repro(duction) season, and that's the majority of what we do during that season," said Dr. Sabrina Jacobs with Equine Performance Vets.

Aiken has a strong contingent of upper level riders and horses, and Jacobs saw the need for the services that Equine Performance Vets is now offering.

"I had a couple of customers that I tried to organize some things for last year, and they would have either had to travel to Florida or go north to get certain things accomplished," said Jacobs. "I decided I was going to do it myself."

The site had to be inspected and approved based on the requirements established by the European Union, said Jacobs. The facility has to have a lot of space requirements and has to be able to offer areas for the separation of horses.

Equine Performance Vets also added a new control-rate freezer this year, which is critical for freezing semen, she said.

But the process calls for the facility to be approved by the United States Department of Agriculture before the approval package is forwarded to the European Union board and then they make the final decision as to whether a location meets all of the necessary criteria before becoming certified, said Jacobs.

"It is a pretty stringent process to go through," said Jacobs of the process that took several months. "There are very strict guidelines as to how everything is laid out at the facility, where the rooms are located, what you do with the semen processing room versus your collection room versus the housing of your horses versus the horses that are under quarantine versus the horses that are coming into the clinic on a daily basis. You have three groups of horses that you are dealing with on a regular basis."

In addition to being able to quarantine horses, Equine Performance Vets can ship frozen semen to the European Union, Canada, Australia, South America and other countries, said Jacobs. They also have a USDA number for their straws and embryos. Straws are specially designed containers that protect the life of the spermatozoa; a mixture of sperm and freezing extender are loaded into straws, which are lowered in temperature by being exposed to liquid nitrogen vapor for a set period of time. Equine Performance Vets will also ship embryos to other locations.

"In the past, there haven't been a lot of embryos being shipped, but it's becoming more popular," said Jacobs. "We already do embryo transfers; we have two that we're flushing this week."

Embryo transfers are based on a mare conceiving a foal then donating the embryo to a surrogate dam or recipient mare. The surrogate dam will then carry the foal to term and deliver it.

For more information, contact Equine Performance Vets at 641-0644 or visit performanceequinevets.com.

Contact Ben Baugh at bbaugh@aikenstandard.com.