Four births may sound like a very small event. For the Grand Noir du Berry, a French donkey breed with a limited population, they are a concrete conservation result. On 28 August 2026, INRAE announced that four foals had been born using refrigerated semen and an adapted insemination method. Three were born at breeders’ farms between October 2025 and July 2026. The fourth was born on 8 July 2026 at INRAE’s Nouzilly site in central France.

The significance is not only the number of foals. In a small population, suitable breeding animals may live far apart. Some bloodlines can become overused while others disappear. If semen can travel for a day, breeders can consider matings between distant herds without routinely moving the animals themselves. That creates an additional tool for managing the breed, but it is not an automatic guarantee of survival.

What happened at Nouzilly?

The project brought together researchers, the French Grand Noir du Berry donkey association and several organisations in the Centre-Val de Loire region, with 17 breeders taking part. The starting problem was technical. According to INRAE, frozen donkey semen still produced success rates of only 0 to 10% in the context described. The team therefore investigated an intermediate option: refrigeration.

The semen was kept at 4°C in a preservation medium derived from one designed for stallion semen. Researchers added 5% egg-yolk plasma and adapted the insemination protocol. After 24 hours of storage, INRAE reports a 35% conception rate, compared with 5% without the supplement and 45% with fresh semen. The refrigerated sample could also be transported for one day in an adapted insulated container known as an Equitainer.

Those figures need careful interpretation. A conception rate describes the start of a pregnancy, not necessarily a live birth. INRAE does not present this as a routine already deployed across every breeding farm. It is a research advance supported so far by four births. The team’s next step is to improve results with frozen semen. One pregnancy using frozen material was under way when the announcement was published; an ongoing pregnancy is not yet a successful birth.

Why is the Grand Noir du Berry vulnerable?

The Grand Noir du Berry is one of France’s officially recognised donkey breeds. It was recognised in 1994 and is historically associated with the Berry area, particularly the Indre and Cher departments, although animals now live across much of France. INRAE estimates that fewer than 1,000 individuals remained in France in 2025, with fewer than 25 births per year. Around 30% of the French population is concentrated in Indre and Cher.

The breed programme published by the French Horse and Riding Institute provides an older snapshot: 1,257 living animals recorded on 31 December 2021, with an average age of 16.6 years. These figures should not simply be subtracted from the 2025 estimate because the dates, databases and counting methods may differ. They nevertheless describe the same structural issue: a small population whose renewal depends on relatively few births.

The selection programme therefore combines two goals: maintaining numbers and maintaining genetic diversity. More animals alone would not solve the problem if their ancestry were highly concentrated. When a small group of males produces a large share of the next generation, the population may grow while losing bloodlines. Spreading matings across less represented families can help control the rise in inbreeding.

What does genetic erosion mean in a local breed?

Agricultural biodiversity includes more than wild species, hedgerows and pollinators. It also includes differences between domestic breeds and variation among animals within a breed. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization monitors these resources through DAD-IS, its global information system for domestic animal diversity. The database covers more than 15,000 national breed populations, representing over 8,800 breeds from about 40 species.

Genetic erosion occurs when bloodlines, genetic variants or whole populations disappear. In a small breed, the risk grows when births are rare, breeding animals are closely related, or a handful of families becomes dominant. The loss may not be visible. Two animals can both match the breed standard while sharing many of the same ancestors.

Why preserve the variation? A lost variant is difficult and sometimes impossible to recreate. A more diverse population also offers more options when diseases, farming conditions or environments change. This does not mean that every local breed is automatically resistant to climate change. Diversity provides a range of possibilities; useful traits still need to be observed and evaluated.

Refrigerated and frozen semen: what is the difference?

Refrigerated semen remains usable for a short period. It can connect a male and female kept at different farms, but it requires precise timing for collection, transport, monitoring of the jenny’s cycle and insemination. In the INRAE project, the demonstrated window was 24 hours.

Frozen semen serves a different purpose. Stored at very low temperatures, it can preserve a bloodline for much longer in a cryobank. INRAE explains that such ex situ collections complement in situ conservation—the continued presence of living animals on farms. In donkeys, however, freezing and thawing can damage sperm quality, and conception results remain insufficient in the project described.

The two approaches are therefore complementary. Refrigeration can support carefully planned matings now, over distances compatible with rapid transport. Freezing could provide long-term security if protocols become effective enough. Pedigree records, mating decisions and cooperation among breeders remain essential in both cases.

Can four foals save the breed?

No—not by themselves. Four births show that a method can work under real conditions. They do not prove that it can be scaled affordably across all farms or that it will improve the whole population’s diversity over time. That would require information about the bloodlines involved, long-term monitoring of descendants and integration into a collective breeding plan.

Conserving a local breed depends first on a living population: breeding females, enough varied males, breeders who can keep the animals, and uses that give the breed a continuing place. INRAE stresses that stored biological material complements rather than replaces animals maintained on farms.

The Grand Noir du Berry is used for leisure driving, pack trekking and some soil work in market gardening. Those activities should not be romanticised. They require skill, time, appropriate conditions and close attention to animal welfare. But they help explain why conserving a breed means more than storing DNA. It also preserves practices, knowledge and relationships between animals, people and a territory.

What could the technique change for breeders?

The first potential benefit is logistical. Moving semen rather than a breeding animal can reduce some transport constraints and make a distant bloodline accessible. The second is genetic: a breed organisation can recommend matings that avoid concentrating births around the same males. The third is collective: a shared protocol builds data and practical experience for a species that has received less reproductive research than horses.

Every benefit depends on organisation. Animals must be identified, pedigrees recorded, matings chosen, veterinary care provided and outcomes documented—including failures. A reproductive technique supports biodiversity only when it serves a population strategy. Without coordination, it could instead spread a few fashionable bloodlines even more widely.

The Nouzilly result is encouraging precisely because researchers, a breed organisation and breeders worked together. It turns a biological constraint into a practical option while leaving honest questions about cost, deployment and long-term effectiveness unanswered.

Why local networks also matter to domestic biodiversity

A local breed survives when breeders, practical uses and an economy can keep it alive. That economy is not necessarily limited to food: farm work, trekking, land management, education and breeding can all contribute. For farms that do produce food, direct sales and local visibility can help explain their practices and retain more value in the area.

This is where Seeed can play a modest, specific role. Seeed allows individuals and producers to give, sell or swap harvests and local products with people nearby. It does not preserve a breed and it replaces no breeding programme. It can, however, strengthen connections between residents, small-scale production and nearby farmers—the social fabric in which locally rooted agriculture continues to exist.

The four Grand Noir du Berry foals do not solve the erosion of domestic biodiversity. They demonstrate something more practical: when scientific innovation addresses a need defined with breeders, it can make a previously difficult mating possible, keep a bloodline in circulation and give a vulnerable population a little more room to recover.

Sources

Image credit: “Ane grand noir du Berry La Celle-Condé”, Eponimm, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. View the image source page. The image may be cropped for the cover display.