Lutrick Show Cattle

08/05/2026

No rain drops hitting the ground here yet, but the calves have been! 👍

07/10/2026

06/14/2026

6-14 update:

Good start👍! Hoping for the best!

06/08/2026

6-8 update:
We have one high quality ICSI embryo ready for transfer today🙌! Hoping for the best!

06/03/2026

6-3 update

Adios embryos are now both 45 + days! 👍🙌

After our last attempt with cIVF with Areybe we decided we would go back to ICSI on the same mating because Jo has been working well that way. Although the semen and the oocytes both look good, sometimes certain mares and studs just don’t seem to “like” each other as much as other crosses. I don’t think there is much more of an in depth explanation that is widely accepted as far as I know, but something at a chemical/biological level just doesn’t click as well in some matings as it does in others. That doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with either the stud or the mare, but just a “preference” at the cellular level of reproduction. Pretty interesting! I think it’s pretty cool that for as much as we(humans) know, there is so much we don’t! God is good!

Last Friday, we injected 10 of the 13 oocytes collected. I felt like that was a good percentage of quality oocytes. The semen was high quality as well. Yesterday, we got the report that 2 of the 10 had cleaved. Not the most exciting news of the day, but 2 is better than 1 and definitely better than none! Hoping these two do the right things and grow and thrive into sticky little embryos with no quit! Hoping the next update is positive on these and we end up with a healthy foal(s) on the ground next spring.

We went and saw Areybe in person a couple of weeks ago. He is obviously talented and athletic, but I really like his size and build as well. I think this mating could result in some really nice, versatile horses with enough mind, size and talent to go any direction.

05/30/2026

A couple of updates: 5/30

Some exciting news! Both recips carrying the Adios x Jo embryos were checked safe in foal @44 and 45 days earlier this week! Big milestone there. Although it is common to bring them home from the facility at this stage, we will likely leave those recips at the breeding facility until they are 90 days in foal just to be on the safe side. We don’t want the stress from long haul home and change of environment to have an adverse effect on the pregnancies.

In other news, the IVF to Areybe didn’t go as well as we had hoped. We don’t really know why because neither Areybe nor Jo had ever been worked using IVF, there are so many variables and the semen and the oocytes all looked good. We did have several embryos cleave and grow early, but they stalled out around day 5 and most of them never developed into healthy transferable embryos. We did have one that looked like it would work, but in the process of preparing it for transfer it broke and was no longer viable.

Jo was aspirated again on Wednesday the 27th. We recovered 13 oocytes. We will be breeding to Areybe again. I decided to use fresh semen and use ICSI rather than IVF on this round. Today, Friday the 29th, 10 of those 13 were injected.

05/15/2026

5-11 update:

Only checked one of the recips today. Happy to report that a heartbeat was detected in recip 442🙌! Still walking on eggshells until we get to day 45, then 60🙏

05/10/2026

Happy Mothers’ Day!

5-10 update:

We are starting the morning off with 7 cleaved embryos by Areybe using an ICSI volume of fresh semen and cIVF! Hoping these will develop into healthy, high quality, extra sticky, transferable embryos.

05/06/2026

5-6 update:

This is the stage that makes me the most nervous so far😬… Of the two embryos that checked safe last week, we have a definite heartbeat on one, recip 1253 is on the right track, but nowhere near the finish line yet. The other, carried by recip 442, had a questionable heartbeat today, so that doesn’t sound good since that is how the last check went before we lost the pregnancy. However, I am still thinking very positively about this embryo because it was transferred one day later than the first, making this a 24 day check, not a 25. I believe heartbeat is usually first detected between days 24-26, so there is definitely still hope that it is doing the right things! Praying these guys attach, thrive, and hit the ground running next spring!

05/06/2026

Update on our venture😜:

Our 19yo mare “Jo” gave us 21 oocytes today, compared to 12 on the last round! We have decided to try something new to us and pretty dang new to the industry as well. We will be using cIVF instead of ICSI. For this process we will use a very small volume of semen, the same dose used for the ICSI procedure, to fertilize these oocytes. I was fortunate to line the aspiration up with Areybe’s collection day, which is tomorrow, so we will overnight fresh semen to In Foal, where it will be used first thing Thursday. Although the conception rate on the ICSI embryos seems to be pretty good overall, the early cIVF embryo retention rate seems to be much higher. I’m excited about this cross! Hoping for the best.