Collecting Equine Urine (suggestions)

Horses urinate relatively infrequently, about once every 6 hours. Consequently, unless you know the habits of your mare, it can be tricky catching her urinating so that you can collect a sample for pregnancy testing. Some mares are very obliging, and will urinate predictably after exercise or feeding, or being put on or taken off a float, and so collecting a urine sample is easy.

Less co-operative mares can often be encouraged to urinate by putting them in a stable with light plastic sheet on the ground and fresh straw at the parameter. You can collect a sample off the plastic sheeting or mat. A few specs of dirt will not hurt the test results.

Some mares will urinate after they have been 'whistled' at. Some owners have also found that simply taping a sanitary pad below the vulva of their mare permits easy collection of a urine sample.

It is not necessary to collect the urine sample directly into a container as it is being voided. If you see your mare urinating, urine which has been voided onto the ground can still be collected by placing absorbent material (e.g. a paper towel) onto it, and squeezing the urine out into a container.

Another very reliable method to collect urine is to attach a collection device to the mare. One such device, invented by breeder Gill Booth from Australia, attaches to the mare's blanket cover. The device is simple, inexpensive and easy to make, and generally undetected by the mare. A picture of Gill's device is shown below.

Suggestion: Placing some absorbent material in the collection container is also useful, as this prevents all the collected urine splashing out when your mare runs up to greet you! Again the urine can be squeezed out of the absorbent material into a sample container for shipping.