We offer on-farm AI services, specifically for farms with 10 or fewer head.
Why? Because we only keep about 8 head of cattle ourselves. We learned that finding someone who will come to your farm for only a handful of cows is next to impossible.
Artificial insemination has a 60% average success rate. Small farms have an even lower rate. We believe this reduced rate is, at least in part, due to the stress a cow is under when she is AI-ed off farm. First, she is loaded into a trailer, bounced down the road for who knows how long, then turned out of the trailer into an unfamiliar space with people she doesn’t know, only to be herded into a squeeze chute, have an arm run into her bum and, likely, a needle stuck in her. Then she gets run back into the trailer and bounces home. How could that not be stressful? How could that experience positively support a successful AI?
Services we offer
Call-Out Service: Occasionally, we can do a call-out service. Call-out is an “on-demand” service completed when you are certain when your cow comes in heat, and we can predict, with some accuracy, the best time to AI. This type of service is less common, simply because it is frequently difficult to know exactly when your girls come in heat. When you do know, it is likely that they won’t all come in at once or will come in heat sometime that puts the “sweet spot” for AI at a time that just isn’t convenient for anyone. However, if we can work with you and your girls to use a natural heat, we love that! Fewer artificial hormones and interventions makes for a better calf!
Synched Service: This is the most common way of doing artificial insemination. It does involve the use of hormones and requires someone to conduct the synching process.
On the positive side, you get to decide when you want a calf – within a couple of weeks, give or take. You also get to have all your girls done at once, if that is how you want to run your herd.
With synched service, we discuss your goals and schedule a date and time for the AI service to be completed. We then prepare a synching schedule for you to let you know what needs to be done for your cow, when, and at what time to ensure she is ready to receive insemination on the appointed day.
Why AI?
Artificial Insemination, or AI (not to be confused with artificial intelligence) is the process of artificially introducing semen into the uterus of a cow (or other animal) to induce pregnancy. So the short answer to why AI is: to get your cow pregnant. Yes, that is the job of a bull. However, there are a lot of reasons not to keep a bull.
First, safety. Bulls are generally large, heavy animals that are… well, for lack of a better description, animals. They have their own opinions and personalities and with the weight they carry, can be very dangerous. I have personally witnessed a bull charge someone from behind, hit him in the bum and throw him ten feet up in the air. Fortunately, the worst of his injuries was a cracked tailbone. But it could have been much, much worse.
Second, cost. If you own cows, you know it isn’t a free activity. Even if you have unlimited pasture, the costs still rack up. Between hoof care, veterinary care, supplemental feed during the winter or drought, the costs can really add up. Other than getting your cow pregnant, they don’t produce much. And he can only get a cow pregnant once every 11 months. The rest of the year, he is a temperamental adolescent who has no behavioral filter and provides no dollar value to your farm.
Third, genetic diversity. One bull = one set of genes. Breeding a bull with his daughter leads to bad genetics – just look at the crowned heads of Europe! There are reasons that laws exist prohibiting incest. Without diversity, the genetic makeup of a herd deteriorates. AI allows the farmer to introduce new genetic material into the herd on a selective basis, improving the gene pool overall and growing a herd that produces better quality and quantity.
There are likely many other reasons, but these are three good ones that make us certain, that while we own a bull, AI is an important part of our herd plan.
What does AI cost?
There are fixed and variable costs involved in AI, so making a simple statement of cost is really not possible. However, you can estimate pretty closely what your costs will be with the table below.
Fixed Costs.
- AI: $25/cow
- Straw: $50^
- Straw storage: $15/quarter/10 straws
- CIDR: $25 each + shipping
Variable Costs.
- Mileage from our farm to yours: $2/mile*
^ We have a limited selection of straws available. If you elect to use one of our straws, the price shown will be the cost.
* Our departure location is 5014 FM 1500, Paris, TX. Using Mapquest.com, you can closely estimate the mileage amount. When we schedule an AI service, we attempt to schedule others in the area for the same day. This allows us to distribute the mileage cost among all the area services on that day. As a result, you can determine your “worst case,” but may actually have a lower mileage cost.
How to schedule AI service
If you are interested in scheduling AI service, please email us to begin the process.