Reproduction
What we do
Dedicated to high-quality animal care, the Georgia and Philip Hofmann Center for Animal Reproduction offers reproductive evaluation, diagnostics, and treatment from a team of four board-certified reproduction specialists and a board-certified behaviorist.
Our Reproduction Services
Functions, Forms, and Programs
Located one-mile southwest of the New Bolton Center campus on approximately 25 acres, the Center can house up to 19 horses in separate wings and stalls for cattle and small ruminants. The large spacious breeding shed with rubber flooring, stimulus mares for semen collection, a hydraulic breeding mount that can be adjusted to accommodate your stallion’s height, full laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment, examination stocks for mares, handling system and chute for our bovine patients, and on-site embryo transfer recipient mare herd.
Our Reproduction Services
Functions, Forms, and Programs
Located one-mile southwest of the New Bolton Center campus on approximately 25 acres, the Center can house up to 19 horses in separate wings and stalls for cattle and small ruminants. The large spacious breeding shed with rubber flooring, stimulus mares for semen collection, a hydraulic breeding mount that can be adjusted to accommodate your stallion’s height, full laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment, examination stocks for mares, handling system and chute for our bovine patients, and on-site embryo transfer recipient mare herd.
Mare Services
The Georgia and Philip Hofmann Center for Animal Reproduction provides a wide range of mare services, including fertility work-ups, breeding management, and assisted reproduction like embryo transfer and oocyte collection. We offer various evaluations and tests for the mare’s reproductive health, such as palpation, ultrasound, uterine culture, cytology, biopsy, and more. For more advanced diagnostics, they provide hysteroscopy, uterine lavage, endocrine testing, and cytogenetic analysis. If you’re interested in a fertility work-up for your mare, contact the team at 610-925-6364.
There are also breeding packages for mares using fresh, chilled, or frozen semen, which include necessary ultrasounds and inseminations. Additional costs may apply for boarding, medications, and treatments. Mares bred with frozen semen are closely monitored and inseminated at the optimal time. All mares receive personalized care, including daily turnout. Other services include pregnancy diagnosis, fetal gender determination, twin pregnancy reduction, treatment of uterine infections, and endometrial biopsy interpretation. They also provide surgeries for reproductive health, foaling packages for high-risk mares, and options like embryo transfer and oocyte collection for mares with reproductive issues.
Stallion Services
The Hofmann Center provides stallion semen collection services in a well-equipped facility with experienced handlers. Semen can be collected from your stallion on a breeding mount or mare. They also manage natural breeding for both mares and stallions.
The team specializes in alternative semen collection methods, such as ground collection and pharmacologically-induced collection, which are useful for disabled stallions or those unable to use standard methods.
All semen is thoroughly analyzed by veterinary specialists before packaging and shipping. Containers are available for purchase or rental. Stallions receive a summary of semen quality and shipments at the end of each breeding season. Semen collection services are available by appointment Monday-Friday and with prior arrangements on weekends.
To book a collection, contact the team at (610) 925-6364.
Forms for Mare and Stallion Procedures
Food & Fiber Animal Services
The Hofmann Center offers a wide variety of fertility services for food and fiber animals:
- Bull breeding soundness evaluations (performed on farm or at the center)
- Ram breeding soundness evaluations (performed on farm or at the center)
- Female camelid breeding soundness evaluations
Our reproduction clinicians also collaborate with the other board certified specialists at New Bolton Center to evaluate male, female and pregnant food and fiber animals that present to the hospital for illnesses and injuries related to the reproductive tract.
Equine Behavior Clinic
Our Equine Behavior Clinic and Program at New Bolton Center has grown from within the Section of Reproductive Studies. Since the early 1980s, the program has had research as its core activity. The program has included involvement in related clinical and teaching in the veterinary school and continuing education programs nationally and internationally.
We offer telephone consultations, appointments at our facility or your farm. Generally we can lend our expertise like weaving, cribbing, pacing, and head-shaking; developmental foal behavior; aggression; social and separation problems; stallion breeding behavior issues; self-mutilation; hyperactivity; and mare behavior problems related to foal interaction, estrus cycle, and stallion-like behavior.
Our Care Team
Reproduction Service Chief
Tamara G. Dobbie, DVM, DACT
Associate Professor of Clinical Reproduction, Large Animal
Clinicians
Director of Hoffman Center
Residents and Staff
Luisa Correa, DVM
Resident, Large Animal Theriogenology
Leslie Sandoval Rosales, DVM
Resident, Large Animal Theriogenology
Carolyn Rosazza
Reproduction Technician
Jess Edstrom
Stallion Handler
Ben Guessford
Stallion Handler
Equine Behavior Short Courses
If you have questions about courses and dates please contact Sue McDonnell at (610) 925-6221 or suemcd@vet.upenn.edu
- Classes are usually held from 8:00 AM to 4:00 or 4:30 PM
- CE: 16 Hours Continuing Education Curriculum Classes
- Tuition: $500 for day 1 only, $900 for 2 days.
- Location: 382 West Street Road Kennett Square, PA 19348.
From time to time, the Equine Behavior Program offers short courses on a breadth of topics. The courses are taught by New Bolton Center faculty members Sue McDonnell, PhD and Patricia Sertich, PhD.
These courses are presented by the Havemeyer Equine Behavior Lab and the Georgia and Philip Hofmann Research Center for Animal Reproduction, University of Pennsylvania, New Bolton Center
- Two day course for veterinarians, horse owners, breeders, trainers, stallion handlers, vet techs, behavior specialists, and animal science, behavior, and veterinary students/residents
- Focusing on concepts and skills for safe, efficient handling and general management of breeding stallions
Day 1
- The Basics of Stallion Restraint
- Stallion Handling for Natural Cover
- The Basics of Mare Restraint
- Stallion Handling for Dummies (Dummy Mounts)
- Pasture Breeding
- Lessons from Free-Running Equids, Including a Tour of a Semi-Feral Herd
- Hands-On Stallion Handling Opportunity
- Individualized Coaching on Stallion Handling
Day 2
- Breeding Shed Layout and Equipment
- Starting a Novice
- How to Correct Biting, Rearing, Charging, and Other Bad Habits in the Breeding Shed
- Tips and Tricks For Handling the Older or Disabled Stallion
- Tips and Tricks for Working with Limited Personnel
- Common Breeding Behavior and Fertility Problems of Stallions
- Hands-On Stallion Handling Opportunity
- Individualized Coaching on Stallion Handling
Two-day Course for veterinarians, animal behavior clinicians, animal science students, horse owners, and managers.
- Focusing on normal and abnormal behavior of horses, with topics specific to those with serious interest in horse behavior.
Day 1
- How horses communicate
- Learning in horses
- Discussion of natural horsemanship and other popular training methods
- Behavior modification for common problems such as trailering problems, injection shyness
- Stereotypies: cribbing, weaving, pacing, head shaking
- Current methods of veterinary behavior evaluation and therapy
- Tour of a semi-feral herd
Two‐Day Course with both classroom discussion and hands‐on experience
Open to: Students, owners, trainers, veterinarians, farriers and anyone at any level of skill and expertise with a serious interest in understanding horse behavior and “misbehavior.”
Focusing on: Avoiding, rehabilitating, and managing common horse behavior and training problems
Loading and transportation difficulties, such as treatment aversions (eye and oral medication, needle sticks, rectal temping, genital examination, etc.)
Difficulties with ordinary ground handling procedures (catching, haltering, leading, tacking, mounting)
Food‐related aggression, stereotypies, rearing, biting, pawing, bolting when turned out, and gate rushing
This course could be called “how to behave so a horse behaves as you wish.”
Classroom sessions touch on how animals learn, the natural basis and “man‐made” factors contributing to the common undesirable equine behaviors, the simple tools, and techniques for animal behavior modification.
Hands‐on will include demonstration, participant practice opportunities, with coaching for various recommended popular and advanced techniques.
Specific protocols and equine‐specific tips will be offered for common behavior modification techniques including acclimation, systematic desensitization, counter‐conditioning, clicker and target training, and all‐positive reinforcement vs. pressure and release vs. punishment.
One-day Course for Owners, Breeding Farm Managers, and Veterinarians
Day 1
- Breeding management of the mare when using fresh, cooled-transported or frozen semen.
- Common causes of infertility in the mare and breeding the “problem” mare.
- The normal events of pregnancy between fertilization and day 100 of gestation.
- Early pregnancy failure.
- Embryo transfer and newer assisted reproductive techniques.
- Two-day Course: for veterinarians, horse owners, breeders, trainers, stallion handlers, vet techs, behavior specialists, and animal science, behavior, and veterinary students/ and residents
Day 1
- Reproduction of equids under natural conditions, including normal behavior of the pregnant and foaling mare and foal development.
- Maternal behavior and bonding problems and solutions.
- Raising an orphan foal.
- Normal behavioral development of the foal.
- Early intensive handling of foals.
- Least stress weaning methods.
- Raising the user-friendly foal and horse.
Day 2
- Understand the changes your mare is experiencing.
- When will she foal? Signs of impending parturition.
- Tools to help you catch the big event.
- Review of the normal events of delivery.
- Examination of the afterbirth, the mirror of fetal life.
- Induction of parturition.
- You have waited 11 long months. What is the rush? Dystocia.
- What can go wrong, and what you can do until your veterinarian gets there.
- Care of the post parturient mare.
- How to spot serious life threatening problems.
- High risk pregnant mares.
- Health care of the foal.
- Five-day Continuing Education Experience with Both Classroom Presentation/Discussions and Hands‐On Experience in Methods of Studying Horse Behavior under Natural Social and Environmental Conditions Using our on‐campus semi‐feral herd as a living laboratory for the course.
- Open to students of any age or level of experience, owners, trainers, veterinarians, farriers and anyone at any level of skill and expertise with a serious interest in better understanding horse behavior with an introduction to ethological field study methods.
Includes two classic text-books, various hand-out readings, and all other materials needed for the course. Opportunities will be provided to photograph horse behavior for teaching purposes.
