No romance ahead.
No sweet slobbers. No bull sniffs.
Insemination.
Tag Archives: artificial insemination
Calves: summertime, and the livin’ is easy
Pairs grazing on the Routt National Forest
Cow with her AI calf
Happy calves
Summer Love: A.I. for the cows
Cows waiting in the Elephant Corrals
Not all of our cows find Mr. Right Bull in their forest pastures in the summer months. Some of them meet Mr. Artificial Inseminator just before they trek to the National Forest grazing permits. After studying the bull catalogs and deciding on the future fathers of many of next year’s calves, Eamon orders semen and sets the wheels in motion.The process is complicated, but the day arrives, and the AI crew arrives, and the chosen cows are ready to conceive. This allows us to use better quality bulls than we can afford to buy, and means that we don’t need to keep as many live bulls on hand throughout the year. The bulls aren’t too disappointed though. They go to the Forest with the cows, and breed those who didn’t conceive or are in the natural breeding group.
The AI techs prepare the semen
This is romantic? No bull!
McCoy and Eamon working the chute
Family labor: Georgia, Jim, Rhen and Jeff
McCoy and Megan bringing up the cows
The bull team
Ready to ride
There’s more than one way to conceive a calf
We love our bulls, but a couple of years ago we made a decision to breed some of cows using artificial insemination. Eamon spends hours studying the bull catalog, gazing at them as if they were suggestive photos of ladies. In fact, if you were a cow, you might look at them with that eye.
A.I. is a good way to improve herd genetics in a hurry. It is possible to buy semen from the nation’s top bulls, when the cost of buying such bulls would be beyond the means of the typical rancher.
Where’s the bull?
No bull
Ladder Ranch
