Depending at the stallion, horse semen is one of the maximum costly beverages at the planet.
A gallon of gold-medal-prevailing Big Star’s semen is really well worth $4.7 million.
Wealthy traders are inclined to pay excessive expenses for a verified winner’s semen.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Narrator: Depending at the stallion, horse semen is one of the maximum costly beverages at the planet.
Matson: So, we accumulated approximately eighty mils, and that is gonna be really well worth in extra of $one hundred,000.
Narrator: That way that a gallon of this horse’s semen is really well worth $4.7 million. And it is nowhere close to the maximum costly. Once it is accumulated, horse semen may be separated and offered in small tubes known as straws.
Matson: One of those straws is really well worth approximately $1,2 hundred. We’re placing approximately one hundred fifty million to 2 hundred million sperm cells in every person straw. Big Star’s produced approximately 60 or 70 of them here.
Narrator: Super-fertile stallions like Big Star can ejaculate as soon as a day. Theoretically, this indicates he may want to produce over $20 million really well worth of semen throughout an eight-month stud season. And if a stallion’s semen is excessive best, it may be frozen in straws for destiny use.
Matson: So, on this room is the coronary heart of truly Stallion AI Services. This room’s constructed like certainly a nuclear bunker in here. This is wherein all of the semen is now kept. We’ve were given loads and loads of hundreds of straws in here. We’ve were given over 1,2 hundred one-of-a-kind stallions. So, in here, saved at minus 196 degrees, is loads of tens of thousands and thousands of dollars’ really well worth of semen geared up for use to inseminate mares.
Narrator: In the horse-breeding world, genetics is king. Wealthy traders are inclined to pay excessive expenses for verified winners’ semen, hoping that the ensuing foal affords a huge go back on investment.
Matson: Big Star is one of the maximum prolific display jumpers of all time. He’s a double-gold-medal-prevailing stallion, which, there may be only a few of them out there. He’s were given the precise genetics, really, to move on to expose jumping. So you blend that with every other genetic line at the woman facet and move the ones together. You can pay $1,2 hundred for a unmarried straw, you could have a foal, and perhaps 3 or 4 years later, you could promote that foal for sometimes $one hundred,000. In Big Star’s case, he is hit the ones bells. He had the maximum-rate foal withinside the UK, and that offered for in extra of $one hundred,000.
Narrator: Even aleven though maximum stud farms provide ensures on generating a stay foal, industrial and aggressive fulfillment continues to be a gamble, in spite of robust genetics. In fact, the bloodline of all stallion horses is nearer than you would possibly think. According to an worldwide group of scientists who studied the Y chromosomes of fifty two horses from 21 breeds, almost all current horses descended from only a few unique stallions, from carriage horses hauling travelers withinside the streets proper thru to champion racehorses like Galileo, the world’s maximum costly sire. Even extra surprisingly, 95% of all thoroughbred racehorses, like him, may be traced lower back to only a handful of ancestors, who’re all related to 1 unmarried superstud: the Darley Arabian, born in 1700. But the price of thoroughbred semen is a bit more difficult to quantify, for the reason that breeding ought to arise obviously for racehorses.
Matson: In the sport-horse world, we are very lucky. We can use synthetic insemination to reproduce our mares with, rather than the thoroughbred world, everything’s were given to be performed obviously. They’ve were given to actually cowl the mare obviously. Their issue with their gene pool, in the event that they might permit AI into the thoroughbred world, it’d suggest the gene pool might cut back due to the fact one horse may want to then cowl hundreds of mares.
Narrator: And absolutely everyone wishing to obviously cowl their mare with Galileo wishes critical economic backing. Even aleven though his rate is indexed as private, it is broadly mentioned that his stud price sits at round $650,000, with ease the world’s maximum. But due to the fact thoroughbred horses ought to be bred obviously, and consequently a set of sperm can not be purchased, equating the price of Galileo’s semen calls for a few extrapolation. Assuming that in the route of a herbal covering, Galileo ejaculates the common of fifty mil of semen, and assuming that the semen is excessive-sufficient best to impregnate a mare successfully, and assuming that a breeder paid $650,000 for that service, then we are able to deduce that a gallon of Galileo’s semen may be really well worth a whopping $forty nine million, making it the maximum costly liquid on earth. But is it really well worth it?
Matson: Like anything, there may be a number of work, there may be a number of good fortune in it. But you have got to make your good fortune, and you have got gotta start out with the proper genetics. The chances, obviously, you want to reproduce loads to get that precise horse, however with the proper genetics, you have got a far higher chance.
Narrator: Galileo’s function because the pinnacle sire is cemented through the achievements of his offspring. He has sired no much less than eighty four winners, consisting of Frankel, who himself has now been placed to stud, commanding the second-maximum stud price withinside the UK of round $220,000. In turn, he has sired a in addition 10 winners. Like father, like son.
Despite typically being more secure for each stallion and mare, synthetic insemination is criticized for its ethics round technology and nature. But the evaluation of thoroughbred-racehorse genetics has delivered to the debate surrounding horse breeding. Roughly 10% revel in orthopedic problems, and the bulk go through exercise-triggered bleeding withinside the lungs. PETA investigators captured video from in the breeding barns at Darley in Kentucky, one of the world’s maximum costly thoroughbred-breeding facilities, wherein stallions have been goaded to cowl extra than one hundred mares every in a breeding season. Some thoroughbreds have been even offered for slaughter at a horse meat market.
With a lot cash to be made in racing, display jumping, dressage, and extra, the rate of horse semen will continue to be stable.
