Area facility is approved for equine reproduction work
Equine Performance Vets at the Aiken Complex is the first and only facility in South Carolina approved for processing and exporting frozen semen and embryos to the European Union.
“We’ve done a lot of reproduction work in Aiken since I’ve been here – every year it’s doubled and quadrupled – and now it’s pretty busy during the repro(duction) season, and that’s the majority of what we do during that season,” said Dr. Sabrina Jacobs with Equine Performance Vets.
Aiken has a strong contingent of upper level riders and horses, and Jacobs saw the need for the services that Equine Performance Vets is now offering.
“I had a couple of customers that I tried to organize some things for last year, and they would have either had to travel to Florida or go north to get certain things accomplished,” said Jacobs. “I decided I was going to do it myself.”
The site had to be inspected and approved based on the requirements established by the European Union, said Jacobs. The facility has to have a lot of space requirements and has to be able to offer areas for the separation of horses.
Equine Performance Vets also added a new control-rate freezer this year, which is critical for freezing semen, she said.