It is the time of year when temperatures begin to cool down, the leaves on the trees start to change color and the number of daylight hours decreases. Although Fall is known for a time of “getting rid of the old” we at Select Breeders Southwest in Aubrey, TX are celebrating the new. The new foals born at our facility, the new pregnancies for the mares we bred, the new stallions we managed for this breeding season and the new collections we will perform this Fall for frozen semen processing.
In April we welcomed Hayley Benham as our Export Coordinator and Junior Freeze Technician. She has taken the reins of this position with gusto and has already successfully shipped hundreds of doses throughout the world. As a California native it took her some time to get used to the HOT Texas summer but thankfully she didn’t melt and is looking forward to her first Texas winter.
We celebrated many milestones this summer. To kick it off we have celebrated our inaugural breeding season managing two wonderful stallions, AQHA World Champion Radical Rodder and APHA World Champion Never Compromise. Thank you again to Diane Chilton and Claire Binkowski for trusting us with their stallions and their mare owners. We are looking forward to continuing these relationships for the 2013 breeding season.
We could not have had such a great breeding season without our hardworking and dedicated staff. Judy Johnson celebrated her 5 year anniversary as bookkeeper, Zach Kahn celebrated his four year anniversary as our breeding manager on Cinco de Mayo, and August brought about the one year anniversary of Travis Keller as one of our Junior Freeze Technicians. In January 2013 Erin Bishop (General Manager) will celebrate her 13th year with Select Breeders Southwest.
Zach and our veterinarian, Dr. Lisa Schultz (Weems and Stephens Equine Hospital), had a fabulous season managing our mare breeding program. Their first cycle pregnancy rate of 80% is above the industry average. As a bonus 89% of the mares which graced our stocks were sent home in foal!
Even though SBSW processed semen from a miniature stallion many years ago this was the first time we welcomed one at our Texas facility. Zach accepted the challenge of collecting semen from such a small dynamo and successfully processed semen from Wizard’s Spell Trouble’s Exemplary.
The only “old” thing we will reflect on this year is that it was 20 years ago when SBSW was born in Aubrey, TX. In the past 20 years we have collected over 1000 stallions, processed over 14,000 ejaculates, bred hundreds of mares, traveled hundreds of thousands of miles in our mobile labs to destinations throughout the United States and helped countless mare and stallion owners include frozen semen in their breeding programs.
Keep your eyes open as you travel the highways this Fall. Our mobile labs will be seen rolling between Houston, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and throughout North Texas. Honk if you see Zach or Travis “loaded up and truckin”!
At our facility we provide breeding services for mares and stallions alike. Whether it be year round care, breeding management, cooled semen/frozen semen processing, storage and distribution of equine frozen semen, breeding season management for resident or trailer in stallions we are here to help make your breeding operation a success. We look forward to speaking with you when you call to inquire about our services and fees.
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