Dr Brockmann is the assistant to Dr Burchard Bade, the head of the state stud in Celle, home of the famous Hanoverian stallions. Axel is also in charge of the marketing of frozen semen from the stud around the world.
"I have contacts all around the world, through email and faxes, I try to find the right stallions for the right people - to find the good bloodlines for Australia, America and England."
"The State Stud Celle started freezing semen in 1973 together with the veterinary university of Hanover, and we still work together."
Have there been many improvements in technique?
"Yes, particularly with the extender we mix with the semen. We also have different techniques, at around minus 30 it is a very dangerous point for the semen, it can easily be damaged. Now we slow the freezing process down, and the quality is much better."
Do you monitor the quality of every collection?
"We have to. We test every collection, thaw some straws and examine for motility. The percentage of success is much higher now. Particularly with Mr Kingma (Eil Kingma of International Horse Breeders) who sells our semen in Australia, he is our most successful client because he works only with the best vets. In other countries this is not the case, but an excellent vet is very important. In Australia, you are averaging a pregnancy with every second insemination, and that is very good."
"At Celle we are very successful using frozen semen because we have so many young vets fresh from university. We use frozen semen especially for Weltmeyer. He had 600 mares last year, and so if one day he hasn't got so much semen, we use frozen semen. We bred sixty mares last year with frozen semen, and got 75% pregnant with an average a little bit above two inseminations for each pregnancy. Weltmeyer is the best, excellent semen frozen as well as fresh, with frozen it is a little bit less, but only a little."
What is your major market for frozen semen?
"Australia. Over the years Mr Kingma does a very good job with advertising, he is always promoting the new stallions as well as the established ones. For us it is a good deal, having only one person to deal with - in Canada, everyone orders their own semen and it is not such a good system."
How much frozen semen do you sell?
"Around a thousand inseminations a year, world wide. It has been increasing every year and we hope this trend will continue. We do our best. We only freeze 60% of our stallions so we only export the best quality semen. Even a stallion as famous and successful as World Cup 1, his semen is not so good, so we don't offer it because the quality is not good enough."
In Germany are more breeders using frozen semen?
"In our area of Lower Saxony because there is the possibility to use fresh semen, that is what they use, but in other parts of Germany, the acceptance of frozen semen is increasing - but not as good as it is in France. In France they don't have anything against frozen semen, but in Germany they are still a little bit defensive about frozen semen - but it changes, as they see it is nearly as successful as fresh semen, then there is no reason not to use it. With frozen semen, the stallion is always available. With fresh semen you have some days when the semen is better than others."
You don't have any restriction on breeding with the semen after the stallion is dead in Germany?
"No. That is only in France. If we have a good young stallion and he dies from an infection or something, it doesn't make sense not to use the semen."
So what is the oldest semen you have?
"We still have some semen from Absatz, and he has been dead for fifteen years. We haven't used it for years, but every now and then we check, and it is still motile. The semen was frozen in the middle of the seventies, and it is still okay."
Some stallions won't freeze?
"Ten to fifteen percent. We offer 60% of our stallions for that reason. I promise we will not offer the semen that is not good. In the 60% of stallions that we use, over 30% is really excellent - the Weltmeyer, the Wolkenstein. The minimum is 800,000,000 total sperm count, that is very high. For some insemination doses, if the semen is very concentrated, then you would only get six straws, and with some it would be twelve straws. Each collection is tested. The semen is the main factor, but the veterinarian is also 50% - 50/50 vet and semen, it is so important to find the right time to inseminate."
EDITORIAL
Each year we have had the frozen semen special, I have written a little editorial outlining the success I have had using frozen semen with my own mares. Alas last season was a bit of a disaster. My two older mares, one is 17, one is 16, simply refused to go in foal. I even sent the older one off to a local real live Thoroughbred stallion, and he covered her on two occasions - but no luck. The other witch just would not get in foal no matter how hard we tried. I did get my 12 year old Thoroughbred mare in foal to Wolkenstein 11, though not until she had been bred three times - for the past two seasons she has gone in foal first time.
So am I going to give up on frozen? No way. I'm just going to try harder, to take into account the fact that two of the ladies are getting a little older, and hope like hell for better luck this season.
- Chris Hector