Training of a Stallion to Use a Phantom

Training a stallion to use a phantom, breeding dummy, or breeding mount can take just a couple of training sessions or may require many sessions over several days or weeks depending on the nature of a particular stallion. Typically, a stallion that has had semen collected using a jump mare with an artificial vagina (AV) is the easiest to train to a phantom. A stallion that has never been allowed to interact with a mare or never bred a mare previously, may be more challenging to train. The key to training a stallion is to have excellent assistants, a mare in good estrus, proper facilities, and to titrate the exposure to stimuli properly. This chapter discusses the step by step procedure for training a stallion to use a phantom with illustrations, and the equipment and supplies needed.