The same international reproductive team that made ground-breaking progress treating stallion infertility in 1999 in Central Kentucky using growth hormone therapy is behind the promising restoration of Early Voting 's stud career.
Early Voting, a 5-year-old son of record-breaking sire Gun Runner and winner of the 2022 Preakness Stakes (G1), launched his stallion career last year at Coolmore's Ashford Stud. The stallion bred 191 mares, of which 120 are confirmed in foal. Despite this early success, the stallion began to show signs of infertility late in the breeding season, which eventually was diagnosed as the rare condition of anejaculatory syndrome—the inability to ejaculate despite displaying all the other attributes of a healthy libido.
Dr. Padraig "Paddy" O'Casaigh was contacted about Early Voting's condition by a consultant, who had heard of the progress made at the University of Auckland Research Centre in Reproductive Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gyneacology in New Zealand, where O'Casaigh is a research associate and senior lecturer. O'Casaigh (who went by the last name Casey back in 1999 but has since changed to his native Irish name) has been involved in research to address reproductive issues in multiple species since he graduated from veterinary school in 1989.
O'Casaigh first came to Kentucky in 1989 through an internship in equine surgery at Hagyard, Davidson, and McGee (now the Hagyard Equine Medical Institute). On the third day of his internship, he met renowned reproductive veterinarian Dr. Norman Umphenour and the two have been friends and colleagues for more than 30 years.
In 1999, O'Casaigh was back in Central Kentucky finding success in treating some high-profile subfertile stallions with growth hormone therapy. During this time, O'Casaigh noticed a group of stallions that did not respond to the treatment at all.
The questions raised from the results seen during the late 1999s and early 2000s are what helped pave the way to the most recent treatment of Early Voting. With the late Sir Graham "Mont" Collingwood Liggins, a professor and researcher at the University of Auckland, O'Casaigh and his team isolated an important communicator within every cell called the chaperone protein.
"Everything starts with a protein," O'Casaigh said. "The messenger RNA goes into the cytoplasm and goes along to a ribosome and says, 'I want to make a protein.' But what if the ribosome says, 'Sorry, the cell's function is not allowing me to make a protein at the moment.' Then you've got a translation problem and it turns out this is all regulated by the chaperone protein axis."
O'Casaigh said research has connected this breakdown in communication within cells to an inability to repair damage done to kidneys from diabetes, neurological cells, and even to injured tendons and ligaments in horses. For this reason, he felt chaperone protein treatment in Early Voting might be successful.
"With any young individual, once you right the chaperone protein axis, it stays right," he said. "People ask me how many cases of this type of thing, of anejaculatory syndrome, I've seen in the world, and I've seen at least 100 and not one of them has reverted. Once you get over that, they just carry on. I'm not saying that a stallion doesn't have ups and downs during his career but they get through it. (Early Voting) has been ejaculating on jump mares, and then he's actually already bred his first commercial mare, so we're waiting days on a positive pregnancy scan now."
Early Voting will continue his stallion career at Taylor Made Stallions, near Nicholasville, Ky., primarily because O'Casaigh already had ties to the farm through its patriarch and founder, the late Joe Taylor. During his earlier days in Kentucky, O'Casaigh and Umphenour spent a lot time at Gainesway with then-owner John Gaines and Taylor, who managed the farm at the time.
"With Mr. Gaines and later Mr. (Graham) Beck, they helped a lot of our early stallion research, all of them, and they helped fund it. We did a lot of groundbreaking stuff with those guys," he said. "No offense to the bigger operations, but I felt with a smaller, family-run operation, I could spend a bit more time and just sit with the horse for a while, assess his attitude, treat him, and it was off the grid. Certain horses are suited to different treatments in different places.
"Coolmore has been happy with this arrangement and they have a good association with Taylor Made," he continued. "What Coolmore did was the right and ethical thing to do. As soon as they discovered a problem, they stopped breeding him and sought treatment. I've found them to be an extremely good group to work with."
Duncan Taylor, senior Thoroughbred consultant at Taylor Made, said the partners in Early Voting were deferring any comments about the stallion to O'Casaigh at this time.
Early Voting will stand this year for $20,000 with a live foal stands and nurses guarantee.
