The Moos Room™

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[mooing]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here and we reviewed our episodes and realized that we hadn't talked about a very important topic that happens with a lot of dairies, most dairies nowadays, and a lot of beef operations as well and that is AI and cattle. I think we've skirted around the topic of the benefits of AI a little bit when we talk about certain things, but the actual act of inseminating cattle, we haven't talked about it very much. To be honest, right away I've bred three cows in my life, and that's the extent of my knowledge, so I am not the expert at all on this.
Emily, you said you've bred maybe a couple more than that.
Emily: Yes, just a couple more. I did take an AI class when I was in college and then thought I was a hotshot and tried my hand and I don't really breed cows that often anymore.
Brad: That means I'm the expert today.
Joe: That leaves Bradley.
Emily: Aw, [onomatopoeia]
Brad: [onomatopoeia]
Joe: That's right, that's what we're going with today. We are going to be helped out quite a bit by an article that Karen Johnson wrote, one of our extension educators, and I will make sure to put that in the show notes so you can see all the things that we're talking about. Really this is meant to be a review because there's a lot of people that know a lot of these things, but I think it's good to cover some of the basics and make sure that this information is out there and then we can talk freely about AI knowing that we have this reference there.
Quick review, big benefits to AI, especially on dairies. One of the big things we've talked about in the past is AI allows you to not have a bull which is very important, especially for Emily's work.
Emily: Correct?
Joe: Yes, I've been chased around by dairy bulls and I'm not a fan of it. Em, give us a quick 30-second update on why you shouldn't have a bull.
Emily: Yes, of course, they're big, and even people who be, "Oh, this is a really nice bull. We raised him since he was a calf." That doesn't matter, as bulls age, they can definitely get more temperamental angrier and it's just unsafe. They can hurt cows while attempting to breed, if they get loose, they're hazard to all people. I mean children through adults. I know of plenty of adults I should say, that have been killed by bulls, so they're just very, very dangerous.
Joe: Yes, and it only takes one close call with a bull and I haven't been to a dairy before. I'm still asking, it's one of my first questions I ask when I get to a dairy, is there bull anywhere that I need to know about? Some people laugh because they definitely don't have one, but every once in a while, they say yes and that's a really good thing to have asked. Brad, how about from a genetic standpoint? Why is AI beneficial over potentially using a bull?
Brad: Really has to do with you get more milk production, that's a lot of it. Bulls tend to be a little bit inferior to AI bulls obviously because AI bulls have been selected for milk production, net merit, you name it, and the semen has been tested for quality. That's another one that you don't really hear about on a farm and that's a tough conversation to have with farmers. I've had that before where they're like, "I had a bull out in my heifers and I had 40 heifers and I got two pregnant." They're like, "Well, what's wrong?" It's like, "Mm, maybe you should test that bull to actually see if he's any good."
Then they go and test him and go, "Oh yes, he is no good and it's well now you've wasted six, seven months of your herd." You hear all kinds of stories that deal with bulls, whether it's from a safety issue, inferior genetics issue, or just soundness.
Joe: Yes, and I think that gap that's there on the dairy side certainly exists on the beef side as well. It's just a little smaller. Natural service is so prevalent and there's really, really nice natural service bulls out there for beef cows. Especially with labor, time, any of those things, having bulls around for your beef cows is certainly a good idea as well. AI, again, same kind of benefits on the beef side. You've got genetics improving faster than if you use natural service. You don't have the issue of having to rotate bulls if you have a bull that's around for quite a while, those kind of things.
The other piece of this that we talk about is biosecurity. The semen coming from a genetics company, those bulls are highly tested and regulated to make sure that they don't have any of these infectious diseases that we worry about that can be a real problem at a whole herd level, so another reason for AI. Okay, let's quit talking about the benefits of AI. If you want to actually AI cows, there's a lot of things that can happen in the process of actually AIing or actually getting the semen into the cow that can go wrong, and decrease the chance that cow's going to get pregnant.
Really, this is all about semen handling and what you do when that semen comes out of the tank and making sure that we take care of it correctly. Brad, if you could walk us really briefly through things and we'll maybe go back and slow it down at each step, but what are the big steps when we're talking about getting everything ready and then AI?
Brad: Well, you have to go back and make sure that the cow or heifer can be bred. Obviously, you need to figure that out. There's many ways to do it. Breed-like sensors, we'll throw that in there. Yes, we love sensors, but even noting different signs of estrus because you don't really want to put semen in a animal if it's not going to get pregnant or have the opportunity to get pregnant because it can be very expensive. Some of the bulls that we've used here can be $8 to $50 so there's real money going into an animal.
Emily: I also think about it too, Bradley, as then you're handling that cow more because if she's not showing heat and you're just breeding or breeding her and so, you also really want to reduce how much you're handling them and doing the breeding process too. It's important to make sure they're ready.
Joe: Sensors are nice, they tell you who to keep an eye on, but I think we talked about it before, you can't just rely on the sensor. You got to look for all the other signs of heat to make sure that that cow is ready.
Emily: Also remember if on your farm you say, we all watch for heat, that means nobody's watching for heat.
Brad: You're right.
Joe: Let's say we check her and we know she's in heat, what's the next step?
Brad: Well, some people have tanks on their farm so they can breed animals themselves. So that's an advantage to being able to do that. Obviously, if you don't, then you have to call a technician to come to do that for you, but if you have it on your own, you have to prepare the semen, get it out of the liquid nitrogen tank, and thaw it. It really comes down to taking it out of the tank very fast and then thawing it in, I like to say 96 degrees for a minute, at least that's my philosophy. It makes things a little bit easier that way.
Joe: Sorry to interrupt everybody, but there's a couple of things that I wanted to make sure that we got into this episode, so here we go. The big thing that we need to remember is that the clock has started. Once that straw semen enters the water bath, we've got 15 minutes until that semen has to be in the cow. It needs to be in the water bath for a minimum of 30 seconds, but it can be in the water bath, pretty much as long as you want, but we have started the clock and as soon as that straw semen hits the water bath, we've got 15 minutes to get it into the cow.
Important to note, you really should be calibrating or at least checking the temperature of that water periodically to make sure it hasn't cooled down too much. If you are using a electric water bath and you want to make sure that that's staying at the right temperature, want to make sure that we're not putting too many straws in there that causes that temperature to drop. It's really got to stay in that 94 to 98-degree temperature window. 96, Bradley like said, is a great number to shoot for. All right, that's all I had for now, back to Bradley.
Brad: When you are done thawing it, you want to check the straw to make sure that it's the correct bull. That's always a plus because sometimes people are thawing multiple units at a time and you want to make sure that you grab the right one if you have more in there at our research station, we've had oopses and you breed the wrong cow to the wrong bull and genomic testing can now pick that up, but that's always important too, is to make sure that you're breeding the animal with the correct semen that you want to use.
Joe: I'll throw out a big plug and hopefully all the breeders that I've worked with over the years will clap for me and cheer for me here, but the big thing is that having the cow restrained while all of this is happening and with the proper restraint before you get started is huge. It takes a little bit of concentration to do this if you haven't done it a lot, people have done a lot. You still are working to concentrate on something and you're not paying attention as much to what the cow is doing and moving. If you're not properly restrained, it's a really easy way to get hurt. Trying to catch cows by yourself and breed and everything. All that does is waste a lot of time in these very busy days for these breeders so just a big plug. If you have someone coming to your farm to breed a cow, make sure you got that cow caught and it's ready to go when they get there. If you don't, help them get that cow caught, get them restrained properly.
Brad: We're done figuring out that we have thawed the semen. We want to get our breeding gun out, we want to make sure that the breeding gun is warm. There's many ways to do that. Some people put it in their shirt or put it in some paper towels to keep it warm. You want to keep it warm so you don't have any cold shock on the semen because that can kill semen, things like that. You want to be able to keep it warm and then keep it warm at all times. Even after you've loaded the breeding gun you want to keep it warm to be able to go out and breed the cow.
Joe: Brad, this is the piece that I think confuses a lot of people. It confused me a lot too, but once you have a thawed straw of semen, what do you do with it to get it into the gun, and then is there anything else that needs to happen with the already-warmed gun to get it ready?
Brad: Once you take the semen out of the hot water bath, you have to get a scissors, clip the end off make sure that you clip the right end off. There's a cotton end in one side that is used to push the semen out so make sure you cut the right end and then you put it into a plastic sheath. Then I usually pull the plunger on the gun back maybe six inches and then insert the gun over the semen into the sheath and then make sure that it's tight. There's many different breeding guns that you can use.
The ones that I'm more familiar with are ones that have a screw on so you screw the sheath onto the breeding gun. You got to make sure that that's on the breeding gun because you don't want it falling off inside. It's happened to me before. Then you pull out the breeding gun and there's nothing in there and then you got to dig around and figure out where your sheath is. You have to make sure that that's on there securely before you even go breeding the animal.
Emily: That's a really important piece of the biosecurity too that you've been talking about, Joe and making sure that you use it different sheath every time of course.
Brad: When you go out to breed the cow, there's always lots of things. You have your breeding gun, you probably should bring some paper towels or something to wipe the vulva off. It's hard to explain. For me, I've bred many cows. I've learned how to AI when I was 19 years old. Sometimes it's you go up to the cow and put your arm in the rectum and clean the manure out of the rectum. Sometimes you can check if the cow is actually in heat. Some people may be more experienced at that, and others you can certainly feel for tone, I guess is what a veterinarian might say in the uterus. Joe, what's feeling for tone?
Joe: Yes, so a couple things when I'm in there looking at heats is first of all you can actually pull the uterus back towards the vulva. You can sometimes get some discharge and that would be some clear fluid. That's usually pretty common for heat. Tone and the uterus, a lot of times the uterus itself when it's not in heat is pretty flaccid and loose, and you can feel each horn pretty extended. When we get into a uterus that's in heat, it feels physically firmer and tight and almost curled up and there's a little more tone there.
The big thing and I think what a lot of people struggle with when they're first learning to palpate or when they're first learning to breed is just feeling what's going on. When you first start and everyone's in the same boat you're just in there stirring poop around. You don't understand what's going on. You can't feel what's going on in there. Really you need to break it down into really simple tasks. For palpation, the first step is always find the cervix. Just sweep the floor of the pelvis until you find the cervix.
A lot of times I think that would be the first step for me in teaching someone either palpation or how to breed. You go in, you find the cervix, and you don't even breed that cow. That's all you do. You don't check for pregnancy, nothing. I just want you to find the cervix and then we can go from there and learn all the other skills that are involved in doing it. That's the first step for almost everything is just go in, figure out what you're feeling, and find the cervix first.
Brad: I think once you've found the cervix can be a little bit tough getting a breeding gun in, especially if you're breeding heifers. Grew up breeding jersey heifers and sometimes those are really difficult. The cervix is not hardly any bigger than the breeding gun sometimes so trying to get a breeding gun into a small cervix can be difficult. I was taught you squeeze the end of the cervix it opens the end of the cervix and then you can insert the gun. Usually, there's three rings that you have to maneuver through the cervix to get there.
Then you can feel at the end once you get into the uterine body, you want to deposit the semen slowly into the uterus, not just squirt it in there because that can not be good.
Joe: Hi, it's Dr. Joe again and I'm interrupting. Just a couple of comments. The uterine body is very short, so it's really easy to get too far past the cervix and then end up in one of the uterine horns. That's not something we want to do. We really want that semen to be deposited in the uterine body. Another thing that I think is really helpful and it's definitely something that you can learn to feel if you have someone who's collected reproductive tracts from cows or if you have an animal die on your farm, it's worth going and finding that reproductive track and getting a feel for this.
The cervix itself is just a thickened part on the uterus, and that's what it feels like. Now when you're actually getting your gun into the cervix it feels gritty. If you don't feel that gritty texture on the end of your gun and all you're feeling is smooth, smooth, smooth, that means you're probably not in the cervix. You might be around the cervix, but you're not actually at the entrance yet. Just wanted to make that note. Back to the regular show. You guys can tell me this is right, wrong, or whatever.
I was always told that you're less trying to get the gun through the cervix as you are trying to maneuver the cervix over the gun. Is that how you guys were taught as well?
Brad: Yes. You want to maneuver the cervix cause you don't want to be poking the gun because you can do some damage in there if you accidentally go into the uterus and puncture through the uterine wall. That would be disastrous. You want to go slow. It's not a race.
Emily: Yes, and that's really what your palpating arm is for. That was something I really remember was reframing. It's like it's there not just to help you find where you're at along the tract but also yes, to help to manipulate that cervix to be able to get it in a position where the gun is just barely through it, just at the base of the uterus there.
Joe: One of the other things and this will save you a lot of headaches and keep you from making that cow very angry and jumpy. You really need to try to avoid going into the urethra. To avoid that, what we do is we try to make sure that we take the gun and we're inserting at an up angle at the top of the vulva if we can because that urethra is so sensitive we don't want to go in there with the gun. That can cause some damage as well. Make sure you're basically pointing the gun at a 30-degree angle up towards the top of the vulva and then you can flatten it out once you're into the vaginal vault.
Brad: Sometimes it can be difficult to get through the cervix, and especially in heifers, sometimes you might get past the first ring and it just won't work. Some people give up, but you should just deposit the semen if you can't get any further, just deposit it where it's at and the chances are likely even if it's in the cervix that you might get that animal pregnant. A bull doesn't deposit semen in the cervix or the uterus. By using AI, we're getting the semen further in than what a bull would actually do.
Joe: It's another reason to handle the semen correctly before you get it in the gun and before you get it to the cow, make sure it stays warm because the viability of that semen, if you handled it really well, once it's in the cow, it sticks around for quite a while. It all is really dependent on the first steps of handling everything correctly, keeping it warm, and doing all of that, and if you have a bull making sure it's good, to begin with.
Brad: I think when you're done, obviously you want to double-check that you use the right semen for the right animal. Double-check, clean things up, throw away the gloves, and sheaths and all that stuff because obviously, biosecurity is important as well. One thing is practice. I think practice makes perfect. It's not going to be easy and it's certainly not easy the first time. Even I think about it, I've known how to AI for over 25 years and I still get frustrated sometimes with some heifers or whatever that it's like you can't get through the cervix or something's going wrong. It's always good to have a refresher course and there's many different AI courses. Things like that to be able to brush up on your techniques.
Joe: That's really what it comes down to. There's a lot of moving pieces when this is happening and when Bradley who's done it for a really long time talks about it, it sounds simple but when you're actually doing it yourself, there's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of things to think about, things that you should be double checking like is it the right bull, all of those kind of things, remembering to warm up your gun. All these things can really trip you up in having success doing this. Hopefully, if you are learning this, you have someone who's teaching you and mentoring you in how to do this and you have the opportunity to practice.
I think that's probably the most beneficial thing about an AI class is getting to see this in basically a no-pressure situation and probably practice on some cows that are not your own and they are usually call cows to be practiced on so we don't really want them to get pregnant and we are using either throwaway semen or fake semen. An AI class is super valuable and if you don't have an AI class to learn a lot of this stuff, then you need to have a really good mentor to walk you through all of these things.
It also helps to have other breeders around because it gives you a benchmark for that herd or whatever you're doing to then see, am I being successful? Am I doing everything correctly because if you have a number to compare to, then you know whether or not you're doing the right thing.
Emily: Yes, and if you're not, that means you're spending a lot of money using straws of semen in that. You need to have something to measure success with and we didn't really get into all the conception rates and all those things that you're looking for, but you have to remember that all of those things in the end do make a difference in the bottom-line on the farm and just how well you can keep moving forward with your breeding program and keeping that on time.
Brad: It's really easy to evaluate that kind of stuff in a computer software whether it's PCDART or DairyComp, looking at sires and you can enter technicians in there, all that stuff. Last breeding season I was 100%. I bred one heifer and I got her pregnant, so I still got it.
Emily: Just next time you say that, leave out the it was only one heifer thing. Just be like 100%.
Joe: 100%, that's all you need.
Brad: I have to--
Emily: Bradley J. Heins, PhD, tenure professor, 100%.
Joe: 100%. Not everyone can be Bradley and be 100% with that and you have to evaluate that for your herd. Sometimes it's just better to have someone else do it who does it all the time all day every day. They're very good at it and sometimes that's the best solution, depending on your situation with labor and time and everything else. I think that's where we'll wrap it. We'll call it a day. As always Emily has our plugs.
Emily: If you have questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals to today's episode, you can e-mail those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Twitter @umnmoosroom and @umnfarmsafety. You can find The Dairy on Instagram @umnwcrocdairy.
Joe: I will link the article that matches all the information that we went over today in the show notes so that you can review it there if you want. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you guys next week.
[00:23:43] [END OF AUDIO]
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