Ovum pick up - icsi

OPU

OPU stands for Ovum Pick Up. In this technique, the follicles are punctured and the oocytes flushed out.

First of all, the donor mare is epidurally sedated to make the procedure as safe and painless as possible. During the OPU session, all follicles are punctured, emptied, scraped and rinsed out separately. The collected fluid is then examined in the laboratory. The retrieved ooxytes are then carefully packed in a temperature-controlled shipping box and sent to Avantea, Italy for the ICSI procedure.

The OPU session takes about one hour on average, depending on the number of follicles present.
It is important to take into account possible complications after the session such as bleeding, rectal rupture, inflammation and in the worst case death of the mare.
OPU can be repeated every 3 weeks if the donor mare again has enough follicles.

ICSI

ICSI stands for Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection. This is the injection of one sperm cell into an oocyte, after which an embryo can be created.

When the egg cells arrive in Italy, the maturation process first takes place. All oocytes are maturated after which a number of mature oocytes remain for ICSI.
After 14 days, we know the effective number of frozen embryos.

The embryos can be stored at Keros and then transferred to a suitable recipient mare.

Advantages of OPU & ICSI

  1. Mares that are no longer able to become pregnant can often still produce offspring through OPU & ICSI.
  2. For sport mares it can be more advantageous as no hormonal intervention is required as is the case with normal embryo transfer.
  3. If you want to use an exclusive, less fertile or deceased stallion for your mare, this is possible through ICSI as only one sperm cell needs to be used per oocyte.
  4. Frozen embryos can be kept as long as necessary.

Available stallions

We have some very interesting stallions available for ICSI:

Baloubet du Rouet Balou du Reventon Berlin
Calvaro Cardento Chacco Blue
Chin Chin Colman Comme il Faut
Conquistador Cornet Obolensky Diamant de Semilly
El Barone 111 Ferro For Pleasure
Kannan Kashmir vh Schuttershof Mr. Blue
Nabab de Reve Qlassic Bois Margot Quick Star
Quickly de Kreisker Sir Donnerhall I Skippy
Thunder vd Zuuthoeve Toulon Untouchable
Vleut ...  

Reservation

If you wish to reserve a place for your mare, please send an e-mail to info@keros.be.
We will treat your request as soon as possible.