In other happy news, Wadha was checked in foal to Monologue CF today. I had been trying to get this mare in foal for three years.
My beautiful Shadows left us today. What a sweet, gentle, soulful mare she was. Shadows was euthanized this morning, and her ovaries collected for shipping to the University of Pennsylvania veterinary center in New Bolton, PA. There, oocytes will recovered and sent to the Equine Medical Services clinic in Columbia, Missouri. This clinic is a world leader in equine reproduction. There, the oocytes will be placed in an incubator. Mature ones will then be injected with tiny doses of semen, a revolutionary micro-technology called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Some of the embryos to be produced via ICSI will then be transferred into a recipient mare right away, and others will be frozen for transfer at a later date. Hopefully this will ensure several male and female offspring from this precious mare. I just wish this technology was both more affordable and more widely available ten years ago, when grand old mares like Javera Chelsea and Dakhala Sahra could have benefited from it. The semen is from Jenny Lees Bahraini stallion Shuwaiman Al Rais.