Argentina is vastly expanding its breeding of its world class polo ponies thanks to the use of embryo transfers that help breeders get the most from their top-performing mares and stallions.
The new biotechnology technique has helped increase the number of breeders of polo ponies in the South American nation from 350 in 2001 to 630 today, and has boosted exports of the Polo Argentino horses fourfold between 2006 and 2010, according to the consultancy Unicorn SA.
What is revolutionising breeding is the use of surrogate mares – which don’t have to be polo ponies.
The technique is relatively simple: the stallion’s sperm is used to inseminate the mare. Seven days after the egg is fertilised, the embryo is taken out and transplanted into the uterus of the surrogate mare, which then carries the foal to term.
This allows the top-notch mares, which normally can only give birth to eight foals in a lifetime as the gestation period in horses is 11 months, to produce 30 to 40 babies, or five to 12 annually.
In another benefit, the natural mothers don’t have to interrupt their polo activities while the surrogates are carrying their offspring. Pregnant mares can only be safely ridden for the first six months of the pregnancy.
“What the breeders are buying from us is time,” said Fernando Riera, owner of the Dona Pilar Centre for Equine Reproduction in Lincoln, some 300 kilometres west of Buenos Aires on the Argentina pampas.
The procedure – which is also used in the rarified worlds of champion horse-racing and show-jumping – allows breeders to cross the best pedigrees and boost their chances of obtaining a winner.
The result can look a bit strange.
“See they don’t even resemble each other,” said Mr Riera, pointing to a chestnut mare in a field nuzzling her black Argentine polo pony.
But he denied this was messing with the natural order of things to create new super horses, saying “we are just helping things along”.
At the Argentine Open Polo Championships in Palermo, the biggest event in the sport, “more than half of the horses are from (transplanted) embryos,” said Mr Riera, who was trained in the technique in the US.
He said in some cases, the mares play in the same matches alongside their offspring.
At the La Martona Club de Campo some 50 kilometres from Buenos Aires, Inge Schwenger and her son Helge were on a visit to buy polo ponies for her club near Berlin.
“For a horse of the same quality, we would pay a lot more in Germany,” said Helge Schwenger, adding the cost was still lower even if the buyer has to pay to fly a pony back to Europe.