I use premate, and love it. Have used it for many years. But I still seem to only get a 50% success rate of pregnancies. It seems I use to have a better percentage back when I bred the traditional day 11 and 14!

Any input anyone can give????

If you only get a 50% success rate, why do you love it?

I would look at a number of things. PreMate is pretty foolproof as long as you do the control - you are doing the control at the same time, right? You might want to check other environmental factors - Lyme disease, well water (nitrates), etc. And how many breedings are we talking about when you say 50%? How many different bitches and how many different stud dogs? What are you using for collection/insemination if applicable? How are you cleaning/sterilizing the equipment if applicable? What food are you feeding and is there flax in it?

Another thing you could do is to send the blood to a lab in addition to running the Premate to make sure you are doing the test correctly.

Premate has a documented success rate of over 90% so I would have a hard time pinning a low success rate on the test.

I have found temperature of testing materials and water used for rinsing can mess with the test.
-always let test get to room temperature
-make sure you D bottle goes back in freezer between uses
-only use distilled water for the rinse cycle.
I have been using it for 8+ years and have a high success rate, would never count on the 11 and 14 day rule anymore, I have girls that ovulate anywhere from day 7 to day 21!

I love it because I can do it at home and not be running to the vets office every day. Plus I get results in an hour

wow, I had never heard about the distilled water thing.
what is the purpose of it, since I don't read that in the instructions, it just says to use tap water???

I thought D could be kept in frig if you were using up the test within a couple weeks (before the expiration dat). I only thought I should store it in freezer if it was, like, months between uses?

tap water can have many chemicals added, chlorine, fluoride, etc.
we have well water so I have to use bottle water on the test. Many bottle waters are just glorified tap water or added minerals.

distilled water is stripped of all additives so pretty safe.

sorry I meant to put the D bottle in the freezer between uses (different bitches)

I have used premate but threw the vet office. I know I can order the kit do it my self....but i'm wondering do you spin your blood? I was told the blood has to be spun down? That's why I've always gone to the vet

I have never used it myself but recently had an experience in which a bitch being bred to one of my boys was timed with Premate and a sample from the same collection/spin (identical handling) was sent to the lab for numeric results for comparison. The bitch was tested at the same time every morning at the vet's clinic and I am not aware of the handling of the kit.

Tuesday – day 13
Camelot Farms: color in bitch sample is fading but still darker than Standard B - retest in 2 days per the instructions (bitch owner was testing every day as we were approaching a holiday)
Serum progesterone 4.7ng/ml

Wednesday – day 14
Camelot Farms: color in sample is still slightly darker than Standard B – retest in 2 days per the instructions

Thursday – day 15
Camelot Farms: color in sample is same as Standard B –the date to mate, with a window of 48 hours per the kit instructions
Serum progesterone 17.4 ng/ml

If she had followed the instructions of the Camelot Farms test she would not have re-tested every day and would have potentially missed testing on the 'date to mate'. Since we were shipping and had the numeric value as well, the semen actually got there on the 'date to mate' and she was bred that day and the next day.

Concidentally, she's a classic Day 13 ovulator and we bred on days 15 and 16. While the kit was technically correct on the date to mate (2 days post ovulation most based on extropolation of the numeric values), we could have been hard pressed to get semen shipped in time had we waited to ship on the day of testing.

We don't know if she's pregnant yet, and will never know if we could have used premate alone, but it seems for a chilled shipped breeding that if you can order semen when the color passes A so that you can breed on the day that it reaches B, that would be ideal (and is what the kit says, 'date to mate').

Best we can tell, the "A" color corresponds with LH surge/approximately 2ng/mL and "B" corresponds with 2 days after ovulation/approximately 12-18ng/mL. Of course, this is just from timing one bitch. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has done similar comparisons. Hope this helps.
CME

When it's getting close I like to test every day too. If you test every other day you still will hit the window - it's about 3 days. But I like to do the first breeding right when the color changes. Gets me more girls! (X sperm live longer, swim slower. Y sperm live shorter, swim faster. Inseminate early, more X sperm around because Ys died off...)