There’s going to be a whole lot of horsing around at Colorado State University. Two premiere equine events will be featured Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27.
CSU will celebrate the grand opening of the Equine Reproduction Laboratory today, April 26. The 12,200-square-foot Equine Reproduction Laboratory will open on the university’s Foothills Campus. Fire destroyed the original main laboratory building in 2011.
On Saturday, the university will host the eighth annual Legends of Ranching Performance Horse Sale. The sale caps a unique learning experience for students in the CSU Equine Sciences Program: For nearly the full academic year, about 40 students have had the chance to start well-bred young horses – guiding them with faculty assistance from barely halter broken to working well under saddle. For sale information, including an online sale catalog, visit the CSU Equine Sciences website, equinescience.colostate.edu.
The grand opening celebration of the Equine Reproduction Laboratory is being co-hosted by the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, which collaborate on multiple equine teaching, research and service programs.
“As devastating as the fire was, the tragedy turned into an opportunity thanks to the leadership at CSU,” said Jerry Black, D.V.M., director of both the CSU Equine Sciences Program and the CSU Equine Reproduction Laboratory. “We have been able to redesign and enhance the facility in every way to truly make it a world-class equine reproductive laboratory. It will benefit our students and the equine industry for decades to come.”
For 30 years, researchers at the Equine Reproduction Laboratory have developed reproductive techniques benefiting horses and preserving bloodlines. Multiple techniques used today in human and animal reproduction assistance were pioneered at the laboratory, including semen freezing and cooling, embryo transfer and other advanced reproductive procedures, including intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and advanced methods of semen and embryo preservation.
Despite the fire, client services, teaching and research activities continued in other buildings on the grounds. More than 500 client horses are examined annually at the ERL.
The ERL has been an active research, education and clinical program within the Animal Reproduction and Biotechnology Laboratory (ARBL) since 1967.
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