Pedigree Query

Does anyone here collect and process their own plasma and/or colostrum? What quality controls do your use? What filtration system? Do geldings need to be blood typed for plasma donation? What were your costs associated with the procedures? Thanks for any help.

Collecting and storing colostrum is very common, and there is a meter that measures its specific gravity as a quality analysis. Don't know how much the gizmo costs.

I don't have any idea about the feasibility of do-it-yourself plasma, but I'm not familiar with common practices of large commercial breeding farms. Considering the cost of equine plasma, about $150/liter wholesale, it seems that the costs associated with its production is considerable. Even large equine hospitals that keep several blood-donor horses in residence that are tested and maintained specifically for that purpose do not produce their own plasma.

You may want to contact a few of the large Kentucky farms about their practices. Surely if it can be done, they are doing it.

I'm NO scientist (I'm an engineer) but I believe plasma is what I separate when I centrifuge a tube of blood for a test. To get a liter of plasma would likely, then, require two liters of blood or so to start with. You would need to feed sufficient blood donor horses (not a cheap task) and they would have to patiently permit blood withdrawals over a specified time. I don't know what a horse's recovery time is as a blood donor.

Then you would have to chill and then centrifuge TWO LITERS of blood. Obviously that would require a much bigger, more expensive unit than my little six hole test tube centrifuge. Who knows what else has to be done with it after that, since plasma usually looks clear while the stuff from the centrifuge still has an orange tinge to it...

I'm not certain, but I think $150 a liter might actually be a bargain.

I've worked here and abroad at TB farms and none of them collected and stored their own plasma.

Colostrum is easy to collect and store (by now, I can tell by the color if it's good or not.)

Do tell about the color of the colostrum.

Yes it's easy to collect and store, provided you have a mare whose foal is not in need of it. I milked it out of the mare, filtered through cheesecloth, and froze it in sterilized mason jars.