All three cloned foals were born healthy and are growing at the stable in Luunja. The foals are genetic copies of the former sport stallion Vodan M. Vodan M was the horse of Urmas Raag, who achieved great success both in sports and as a breeding stallion. Modern stem cell injection technology was used for cloning horses, during which the nucleus is removed from the egg cell and replaced with the nucleus of a somatic cell from the cloned animal. Horses had not been cloned using such technology before. "The embryos developed in laboratory conditions were implanted into recipient mares, which carried the foals. The birth of three foals is confirmation that the developed technology works. Our cloning success rate was 50 percent, which has not been achieved anywhere before," said embryologist Elina Tsopp from the Estonian University of Life Sciences. Estonia has become the second country in Europe after Italy where cloned foals have been born.