As you may have noticed, there seems to be an increased unreliability with overnight shipping companies when it comes to Friday shipments. Semen shipped via the overnight delivery on a Friday appears to get delayed more often than semen shipped Monday through Thursday.
When semen is shipped via UPS or FedEx it goes from Iron Spring Farm or SBS to the shipping company’s hub, the centralized sorting location, before it is redirected to go out to the recipient’s area, where eventually it will be delivered the next day.
When delays occur prior to the shipment reaching the hub, the package may miss its outgoing flights. Carriers will not hold outbound flights, nor will they send a flight out before Monday morning. Instead the Friday shipment will sit at the hub until it’s placed on the outbound flight early Monday morning. From there, ideally, it will be delivered sometime on Monday.
When this happens, the semen is approximately 72 hours old when it gets to your mare. The semen will have lower motility and have more dead sperm in the sample. Plus, your mare likely ovulated sometime on the weekend.
Whereas a shipment that goes out Monday through Thursday and is delayed will usually only arrive one day late. There’s a good chance your mare hasn’t ovulated yet and that the semen is still fresh enough that it should be healthy and have good motility.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid weekend shipping if you plan ahead. If your mare is cycling so she is ovulating on weekends, talk with your veterinarian about the option of short cycling. This will allow you to move her ovulation date so you can breed her during the week and avoid Friday shipping.
See our article about short cycling your mare here
