CSU horse lab delivers life after Windsor tornado

LUCERNE - When Jennifer Mears makes her way down the dirt road toward her parents' ranch in Lucerne, she knows she getting close to friends.

"Always around good company when you're around horses," she said.

Several years back, one horse stood out to her.

"She was my best friend," Mears said of her horse, Tuesday.

It was on a Thursday when Mears lost Tuesday.

"I still look out to the east pasture hoping to see her," she said.

The pasture is where Tuesday was seriously injured.

Spin-off winds from the tornado that tore through Windsor in May threw a shed on top of the horse.

At the Colorado State University Vet Hospital in Fort Collins Tuesday was put down.

"The final goodbye was the hardest part ... being with her that one last time was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do and knowing that she was never going to come home again," Mears remembered.

It didn't take long for Elaine Carnevale to get word of what happened.

"It was horrible," she said.

Carnevale works at Colorado State University's Equine Reproduction Laboratory.

She and her colleagues decided to do what they could.

"It was a bad time for the community," she said. "I think everyone just pulled together to try and get this done for Tuesday's owner."

Carnevale specializes in assisted reproduction, which has been done in the equine community for a few years now, mainly to produce offspring from valuable horses.

She, with the help of several others, harvested eggs from Tuesday's ovaries then injected sperm into each egg.

The fertilized eggs, or embryos, were then placed in surrogate mares.

Because the technicians donated their time, the whole process was free.
The donor sperm was also free, given by a nearby horse thanks to the owner.

Two of the surrogate mares are pregnant and being cared for by Mears who says she's already picked out their names.

"It's going to be Wednesday and Thursday," said Mears.