Assessing the fertility of two mares cloned from the same founder animal.

Abstract

Two cloned mares, produced from the same sample of skin fibroblasts, were bred during four breeding seasons from their second year of age, as embryo donors, in exactly the same conditions, using the same stallions for both cloned mares. The aim of this study was to test the embryo donor potential of cloned mares and to compare the results obtained from two cloned mares of the same mare with other embryo donor mares (n=31-39 per breeding season) at the same stud. For both cloned mares, 19 embryos were recovered by 43 collection attempts (44%) (7/22 for one; 12/21 for the other), 16 (84%) pregnancies (5/7 for one, 11/12 for the other) were obtained at day 14 post-ovulation (D14 ), and 12 (3/7 for one; 9/12 for the other) foals were born. One cloned mare was a less efficient donor mare than the other (p<.05), In control donor mares, 623 embryo collections were performed, with a recovery rate (80%-496/623) significantly higher than for cloned mares. The recovery rate in the subpopulation of 2-5-year-old control donor mares (same age of cloned mares) (89%-127/143) and The recovery rate in the subpopulation of 12 control mares bred with the seven same stallions as clones (55%-17/31), were both higher than for cloned mare (p<.05). The success rate of transfer was not different between embryos produced by cloned mares (84%-16/19) and those produced by control donor mares (79%-392/496). However, the foaling rate per embryo collection was significantly lower for cloned mares (28%-12/43) than for control donor mares (52% - 325/623) (p<.05).