Words – Arnaud Evain, translated by Jean Llewellyn
This article originally appeared in Breeding News (February 2015) re-produced with permission
Jean Petit-Legrand had every reason to be proud. On November 17, 2018, the world rankings of the WBFSH had just been published and he was in possession of 10 straws from each of the 10 best stallions in the world!
This coveted collection was not so difficult to gather: seven of them were “available ‘by the straw’ on the European market, and I recovered the rest by buying them back from a South American breeder….”
Petit-Legrand had invested a total €23,000, but he was going to be able to launch the enterprise he had been planning for four years, since he had first heard of ICSI (Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection).
This technique, common in humans and also used in cattle, consists of injecting one spermatozoid with a micro-needle into the oocyte’s cytoplasm to obtain an embryo. It has been used successfully by all of the teams who had worked on the equine cloning and freezing of embryos at an early stage of their development. It was now controlled by many veterinary clinics in Europe and America, and its cost (less than €200 per attempt) had become affordable!
After a modest career as a breeder and stallion owner, John Petit-Legrand had found a way to write himself into the history of breeding and to establish a fortune at the same time. His operation was based on the fact that ICSI required only a single spermatozoid, while each of his precious straws contained 50 million of them!
Thaw a straw in 5000 ml of diluent, stir to disperse the 50 million cells in a reasonably consistent way, and refreeze the whole in mini 0.1 ml straws: you get 50,000 new straws containing on average 1,000 spermatozoid. It was more than enough to allow a skilled operator to select the spermatozoid that he would use for ICSI.
By Christmas 2018, Petit-Legrand planned to quietly transform his 10 straws from the world’s 10 best sires into five million new straws, perfectly usable for ICSI, or even for normal inseminations for those wishing to ‘play with fire’ with very fertile mares….
Petit-Legrand’s operation was going to be conducted in two market phases: ‘teasing’ in 2019 and ‘flooding’ in 2020. For the first phase he had chosen to work with 30 private centres around the world, recognized as being the most experienced. He would supply each of them with 100 straws (10 from each stallion) and a sponsorship budget of 2,000 euros apiece, covering the first 10 ICSI costs! A charge for them to find voluntary farmers to continue…. This should be no problem, and he hoped to announce at least 100 pregnancies before the end of the year, which was a conservative figure in the light of recent scientific publications on the subject.
By the following Christmas, Petit-Legrand would be able to launch his communications campaign focusing on the theme: “Use one of the 10 best stallions in the world for 10 euros. Yes, you can!”
Ten euros per unit was the price at which he had decided to sell his straws! Well, this ad was pretty widely misleading because you had to factor in all of the logistical costs, oocyte collection, ICSI, and to take account of the failure rate. The end cost would likely be between €800 and €1,200, but still far below the regular stud fee for these world-class stallions.
Petit-Legrand was sure that his slogan was going to hit home! Some testimonials, a few interviews, and the Internet would do the rest! He had identified more than 2,500 insemination centres around the world that were likely to be interested in the technique, and who would like to enjoy this opportunity to create a pool of spermatozoids on the cheap… He planned to sell his stock in under six months, well before any competition snaps into place!
Five million straws at 1O euros per straw, deducting costs, hazards, etc… Profits would amount to tens of millions of euros. Wealth and glory!
Petit-Legrand had thought of everything: Since the end of 2016 he had become the majority shareholder in a private member studbook of the WBFSF. He could thus guarantee to all his customers that their future products would be well accepted, although some traditional studbooks wanted to be choosy, in the same way as they were with cloning….
He had good reason to be fearful when several stallion owners had asked the WBFSH to recognize one ‘single interlocutor’ per stallion for the listing of his offspring to a registered studbook. It was perfectly feasible, and it would have ruined all his projects! Fortunately, it was not difficult to sow the seeds of discord on behalf of free trade, so the project did not collect the required unanimity. Petit-Legrand was home free.
He was well aware of the earthquake his initiative was going to cause, but its operation was perfectly legal and the sight of tens of millions of euros stifled his scruples. After all, it was a game of free trade! And the competition was going to suffer! Certain bankruptcy for the traditional stallion owners who did not have a strong financial foundation…. Petit-Legrand had no doubt that he was going to be emulated. Scientific progress would mark the end of the era of expensive stud fees. In a few months he would be rich and famous!
As a result, he knew, of course, that the value of all stallions would diminish, except as sport horses, and that this would inevitably affect the value of foals and three-year-olds. He knew that the major stallion owners and the studbooks that were engaged in the sale of stallion stud fees would lose their shirts, and maybe their skin! He knew that competitions for the approval of three-year-old stallions would gradually disappear, and that the show grounds for young-horse competitions would become even more deserted. No one would want to invest in the training and testing of future breeding stock if there was nothing to be gained at the end.
Petit-Legrand’s concerns did not extend to whom would now be interested in genetic improvement and funding research to produce horses always better suited to horsemen’s expectations, or who would do the marketing and promotions to help farmers sell their products.
The high-level competition would not be affected by this earthquake; horse dealers would maintain their clientele in equestrian sport, and it would be sufficient, with their help, to convince the prince, patron or oligarch owner of a crack sire to leave him at stud for a few days in order to store tens of millions of doses.
Well, many farmers were going to discover in a few years that they were suckers, and many of the studbooks in difficulty would regret having missed the opportunity to avoid all this by supporting the proposal of the stallion owners in 2017, but it wasn’t Petit-Legrand’s problem…!
After achieving fame and wealth in the sport horse business, he had already begun to focus on breeding dogs, which presented tremendous opportunities….