2011/2012 Sires/Mares Fertility Stats

Just been going through the 2011/12 season Sires/Mares Fertility Stats, now being shown in a revamped format which offers a much clearer picture.

7,370 mares were served in Australia in the 2010/11 season.

5,610 reported as being In Foal. (76.12%)
Given the widespread use of semen transport in Australia, the fact that a shade better than 3/4's of all mares served in 2010/11 came up Positive is pretty damned good.
If we could get that PTIF figure up to or over 80% Nationally then that's pretty much as good as it could ever possibly get.

Of those 5,610 mares reported as being In Foal, 4,787 went on to produce a Live Foal in 2011/12, with some 823 pregnancies falling by the wayside.

To look at it another way, 14.7% of all the mares intially reported as being In Foal in 2010/11 failed to produce a Live Foal in 2011/12. My initial reaction to this is that is a close on 15% loss is just too high.


2011/12 Live Foals produced expressed as a % of all mares served in 2010/11 = 64.95%

2011/12 Live Foals expressed as a % of all mares reported PTIF in 2010/11= 85.30%

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The next step for these figures insofar as ongoing development is concerned is to display a breakdown of the mares served on farm Vs mares served via semen for each stallion & with them the PTIF%'s achieved for each.
This information is of course already available, HRA knowns exactly which horses were the result of semen transport and which were on-farm products. It just has to be incorporated in the report.
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Jaimie,

These are interesting figures and it involves an area of the industry where opportunities exist to reduce the costly loss of mares not producing live foals.
For the last couple of years Pepper Tree Farm have been carrying out regular ultrasound scans of the pregnant mares placentas in an effort to reduce the percentage of mares who abort their foals. The scan enables early detection of infection which, with appropriate treatment with antibiotics, can result in a live foal where an abortion or early foal death could otherwise have occurred. I am not sure if they have statistics that measure the effectiveness of the practice.

G'day Trevor,

This area is something that comments from John Gibson years ago re: the resultant cost to the Industry of all the mares that missed or slipped or who died or who's foals died at or soon after birth got me thinking about.
Hence the push earlier this year for HRA to make changes to the formerly very poorly constructed and named Sires Fertility list so that would actually reflect a genuine sire's fertility aspect...and that mares who'd subsequently slipped or died or who's foals had died at or very soon after birth were not negatively recorded against a sire's figures.
As an aside, I don't know who it was that created the original format but they were an imbecile and that's a fact. It was so slow to appear and so misleading for so long as to have been of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

This round of Fertility stats are thankfully the first of the new format and they reveal some extremely interesting things, not the least of which is the loss figures recorded post a mare being declared In Foal.
We as an Industry currently lose close on 15% of all potential live foals and personally I think a loss rate upwards of 10% is just way too many...so a figure pushing 15% is cause for alarm.
It also sheets home a very large slice of the ' those bloody stallion owners/studs, my mare didn't go in foal, it's the sire's fault' blame to the Breeders & their Vets because, of the 7,370 mares that were served...no less than 1,281 mares straight out missed, 286 foals died and 117 mares died...which adds up to a staggering 1,684 x costs having been pissed up the wall for no result. (currently there are a further 362 down as no returns). There has to be a better way. That is a staggering amount of $ which ever way you look at it. If you allow $500-750 per mare just in Vet/transport fees alone that adds up to somewhere between $842,00 and $1,263,000 and I think the former figure is a dream & the latter is, if anything, a bit conservative.

Good on Rob for taking a swing at improving things. I think there's a lot to be said for what he is doing.