Florida --- The Tampa Tribune carried a story on June 19, 2000 by Jim Tunstall about the use of mares as surrogates to carry foals for other mares:

BELLEVIEW - Veterinarian Phil Matthews finds new moms for yet-to- be-born babies.

He's an adoption agency in that respect. But he's also a lot more.

His patients are mares that can't carry foals full term for one reason or another. So they're bred and, after an embryo forms, it's transferred to a surrogate mother.

His most common customers:

"Performance mares - show, jumping or cutting horses," he says. "Their owners want a foal but don't want to disrupt their schedules."

Other patients include mares that can't have a baby for medical reasons, says Matthews, a partner in Ocala's Peterson & Smith equine hospital. He runs the transfer clinic on an 86-acre farm in south Marion County.

The biological mothers in most cases are sent to the farm seven or eight days after breeding. The embryos are flushed or withdrawn, washed to remove cellular debris or contamination, then surgically inserted into a recipient mare owned by the clinic. The process takes about 90 minutes.

The biological mother goes home when the procedure is over. The surrogate stays at the clinic for a couple of weeks to make sure everything is OK, then she, too, goes to the client's farm, staying until the baby is weaned, usually about five or six months after birth.

MATTHEWS HAS BEEN doing the transfers here since January 1999. Quarter-horse breeder Brandon Perry is his biggest customer.

So far, Perry has sent Matthews more than 100 mares. Less than half

are owned by his farm, Classic Acres in Ocala. The others are owned by customers who want their horses bred to one of his stallions, then have him make transfer arrangements.

"Before Peterson & Smith started this, we'd only done two," Perry says.

"We had to ship the embryos to Colorado State [University], then we had to pay to get the [recipient] mare shipped to us here. It was a major pain. This year, with them doing it, we may do 70 or 80."

Mares have an 11-month pregnancy, so by natural means they can have only one foal a year. But transfers offer another benefit to breeders such as Perry.

"You can get two babies a year out of one mare," Perry says. "Transfers also let you get foals from mares that are too old or otherwise unable to carry them full term."

Matthews, fellow veterinarian Alice Pooley, five or six hired hands and a rotating flow of veterinary students from a variety of schools do other things at the farm, including collecting semen from stallions for artificial insemination.

But transfers are the heart of the operation.

THE CLINIC HAS about 100 recipient mares, which don't have to be the same breed as the breeding pair. In a few cases, the embryos are flushed elsewhere and sent here for transfer. That costs $4,000, plus the care and feeding of the recipient mare through weaning.

It's $500 more if Matthews flushes the embryo.

The clinic did 45 transfers last year.

"We expect to double that this year," says Matthews, 46.

Owners of most breeds are eager to have foals as early in the year as possible. The reason is simple: A baby born in January has a big growth and development head start for the first few years over ones born in the second half of the year. That's important because foals born earlier can be shown, trained or raced sooner within their age groups than those with later birth dates.

"So we're crazy around here the first six months of the year," Matthews says. "We have 12-hour days, seven-day weeks.

"We're busy the next three [months]. Then we get a little break."