Breeding time

It's that time of year: Breeding time via AI (Artificial Insemination) for our Jersey cow Maggie.

But wait, there's more. After much discussion, we decided to breed Maggie's yearling heifer calf Stormy as well.

Stormy is half-Jersey, half-Angus. She looks very much like an Angus, but she has a lot of Maggie's sweet Jersey disposition. And she's big, bigger than her mama.

Here's a comparison between a Jersey butt and a half-Angus butt. You can tell which one is bred for milk and which one for meat!

You can also see that Stormy is now taller than her mama.

In fact, it is because of Stormy's sweet disposition that we decided to keep her as a breeder rather than putting her in the freezer and raising another animal for meat. This means Maggie is now the mother of our dairy line, and Stormy will become the mother of our meat line.

Before we could be certain we could breed Stormy, however, we needed to make sure she was able to be handled. She's never been lead-trained and had never worn a halter. If we could get a halter on her, the chances were good she could get bred. If she was too wild, well ... we had space in the freezer.

Getting a halter on Stormy took a couple weeks of strategizing. We prefer to use chain halters (sometimes called restraint halters) on our animals. We've always handled Stormy a lot – scratching her, brushing her, giving her a bit of grain here and there – so we ramped up these efforts during this time. That part was easy since it's nothing we hadn't done before.

Meanwhile Don prepared a stout rope to temporarily confine her. This was set up with a clip that could be adjusted so we could slip the rope over Stormy's head and a slip-knot would tighten the rope, but the clip would prevent the rope from getting too tight and choking her. The idea was to get the rope around her neck, then thread the other end of the rope through an eye-bolt that was already in place on the barn beam. This would, in theory, confine her tightly enough that I could get the halter on her.

The evening came when we went out to the barn, got Maggie and little Lucy outside, and confined Stormy inside. Right away, of course, Stormy knew something was up.

Getting the rope around her neck was easy enough, but every time Don tried to thread the other end of the rope through the eye-bolt, she would yank it out. Finally, more by accident than anything else, we got her cornered against a side of the barn (cows become more or less immobilized when pressed against a wall), and I was able to slip the halter over her head and buckle it on.

Right away we released her, removed the rope, and gave her a lot of fuss and attention, scratches and brushing. Fussing didn't mitigate the indignity of being haltered. She did not like that ropey thing on her face, that's for sure, and sulked about it for a day or two until she got used to it. But get used to it she did, and quickly recovered her normal sweet disposition.

In fact, a funny thing happened. After being haltered, Stormy became our new best friend whenever Don or I were in the barn or corral. She nudged us (sometimes hard) for affection, she submitted to brushing and scratches like never before, and she started leading with a lead-rope with very little effort. She became so affectionate that we started calling her Princess.

At this point, I emailed the AI lady (her name is Andrea) to inquire whether Stormy could simply be tied up while being bred, or whether it was necessary for the heifer to be confined to the milking stall.

Andrea said it was essential that Stormy be confined. During breeding, Andrea would have her arm inserted literally shoulder-deep in Stormy's backside, and the last thing she (Andrea) needed was a broken arm if Stormy got testy. Fair enough.

After this, we started training Princess Stormy to go into the milking stall.

We already knew the head gate wouldn't work for Stormy – her neck is much thicker than Maggie's more slender Jersey neck – but we had an eye-bolt already installed on the opposite beam that we could use to thread a lead rope clipped to her halter and confine her that way.

But that was in the future. First Stormy had to get used to being in the milking stall without feeling panicky.

This was actually easier to accomplish than we anticipated. Stormy spent the first nine months of her life spending the night in the adjacent calf pen, so that whole milking-stall infrastructure already held warm, fuzzy memories for her. In fact, even now we have to keep the calf pen gate closed when Stormy is around, because she'll make a beeline for the calf pen even though she has massively outgrown the space.

Our morning and evening routines became as follows. Don would go into the small space behind the milking stall where the bucket stand was located (this is where Maggie puts her head to eat grain in the mornings when I milk her) with a bucket of grain. I clipped Stormy's halter chain to the lead rope and gently pulled her toward the milking stall, where Don waved the grain enticingly at the other end. Once she was in the stall eating the grain, we made no effort to confine her in any way, though I did scratch and brush her rear end so she would get used to activity back there. When Stormy was finished with her grain, we let her back herself out on her own terms.

This training period was extremely effective. Once or twice Don threaded the lead rope through the eye-bolt just to get Stormy used to being tied up in place, and while she fought it a little bit in a half-hearted sort of way, overall she didn't seem to mind.

Meanwhile the clock was ticking down to when Andrea was planning to come out for the first stage of breeding the animals, which involved estrus synchronization protocols so both Maggie and Stormy could be bred at the same time. This meant giving the animals a shot of prostaglandin as well as inserting a controlled internal drug release (CIDR) device to regulate the estrous cycle.

This took a bit of calculating on Andrea's part. She was traveling from about an hour's drive away, and had to time her first visit with when her second visit would be necessary. In other words, unless we wanted her to breed the animals at midnight, she had to backtrack and time the beginning of the estrus synchronization protocol at a specific hour. (As it turned out, we had to juggle this schedule a bit because a cow's estrus and a heifer's estrus run at slightly different times.)

Andrea arrived on the evening of August 31 to start the process.You can see how suspicious Stormy looks at all the activity.

Beginning with Stormy, we pulled her into the milking stall, gave her some grain, and threaded the end of the lead-rope through the eye-bolt to confine her. Stormy was nervous at Andrea's presence, but what really set her off was when Andrea gave Stormy the prostaglandin shot in the neck. She didn't like that one bit!

She thrashed around a bit, but Don held onto the lead rope grimly, and Stormy really couldn't move much anyway within the confines of the milking stall. Andrea was able to insert the vaginal CIDR device without any problem.

After this, Don unclipped the lead rope from Stormy's halter to release her, and the heifer backed out of the milking stall with alacrity.

Then it was Maggie's turn. Piece o' cake. She barely even twitched at the prostaglandin shot in the neck...

...much less when the CIDR device was inserted. Good ol' Maggie.

Andrea gave us two doses of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), to be administered to both animals on Day Seven after the prostaglandin shots. We had to make sure these shots were given at exactly the same time of evening as the first shots.

To this end, we made sure to continue giving Stormy another calming week of milking-stall practice, which she did without a problem. However when it came time to give Stormy the GnRH shot in the neck, she thrashed around and broke the needle off the syringe before the GnRH could be administered. Fortunately we had spare needles (and even more fortunately, knew exactly where they were), so we swapped needles and was able to administer the shot successfully. I also pulled out the CIDR device, which was easy.

Maggie, as before, barely noticed the shot or the removal of the CIDR device.

Now the stage was set for the actual breeding itself. Andrea actually had to come out at two separate times because of the slight difference in estrus cycles between cows and heifers. This added to the cost of the breeding since the most expensive component was the per-mileage travel costs, but oh well.

For breeding Stormy, Andrea had to come over after dark (about 7:30-ish). Since the barn light doesn't shine very well into the livestock side of the gate, much less in the milking stall where Andrea needed to see, Don rigged up a portable halogen shop light and aimed it at the opposite wall, so it would reflect back and provide Andrea with light without blinding her.

Andrea had a number of different straws of semen from which we could choose, stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen. This is the vat.

Inside the vat are holders at the end of rods which hold the straws of frozen semen.

Andrea stocks a variety of beef and dairy breed options.

She required warm water (101F) to thaw the semen before loading it into the insemination gun.

Since this is Stormy's first calf and we wanted to avoid any birthing difficulties, we opted to breed her to a smaller breed. We also wanted her to have a beefy calf we could eventually put in the freezer. Of the available semen Andrea had in stock, we opted for a smaller lowline Angus to breed to Stormy. We also opted not to select the gender of the calf.

Prepping the straw and all the necessary accouterments for the actual breeding took about ten minutes. Don was holding onto Stormy in the stall, who had long since finished her grain and was getting restive. But finally Andrea came in with the straw, ready to breed Stormy.

Sorry if the next bit gets somewhat graphic.

The first thing Andrea did was to don a shoulder-length disposal plastic glove and insert her arm waaaay up Stormy's rectum, feeling around the various organs through the rectal wall. Apparently this technique is used to immobilize the cervix through the rectum. When this was accomplished, Andrea took the insemination gun (pre-loaded with the semen) and inserted it into Stormy's vaginal opening. She had to guide the gun through the vaginal canal into the cervix, which she did by rectal palpation and manipulation through the reproductive tract.

It's hard to se what's going on in the photo below, but the large light-colored thingy at top is Andrea's gloved left arm deep inside Stormy's rectum. Her gloved right hand is guiding the insemination gun up the vaginal tract toward the cervix.

I expected Stormy to be having a hissy fit at this indignity, but in fact she was very calm. Andrea explained that's why this narrow window of a cow's estrus cycle is called "standing heat." Cows literally stand still during the breeding process, whether natural or artificial.

This process was actually accomplished fairly quickly. Andrea clearly knew what she was going and got the task done confidently and efficiently. As soon as she was finished, she withdrew her arm as well as the insemination gun, Don unclipped Stormy's halter to release her, and the heifer backed out of the milking stall. Voilà.

That was all Andrea could do that evening. Despite Andrea's competence, Don and I were wiped by the time we staggered back to the house. "Yup, a little shot of whiskey, I think," said Don, one of the very rare times in the last twenty years he's drank anything. He mixed a finger of whiskey with some soda and settled in for the night.

Early the next morning (around 8:30 am), Andrea repeated the process with Maggie. As predicted, this was easier, in part due to Maggie's calmer nature and in part because we knew not to confine Maggie to the milking stall until Andrea had finished prepping the semen and loading the insemination gun.

For Maggie, we chose to breed her to a polled A2/A2 New Zealand bull named Ardachie Zigzag. We also opted to select the gender and chose a heifer. This costs a bit more, but almost guarantees the results.

While shoulder-deep in Maggie's rectal tract, Andrea had a bit of trouble getting the tip of the insemination gun into Maggie's cervix (something having to do with the boniness of Jerseys in general), but at last she succeeded. She did say that should Maggie's breeding not "take," she would come out and re-breed her without any additional cost.

Lucy: "What are you doing to my mom?

Stormy: "What are you doing to my mom?"

And that was that. Stormy was bred on the evening of Sept. 9, and Maggie on the morning of Sept. 10. Both should calve around June 15 of next year.

Despite the hassle of training Stormy and the cost of the breeding, we're very satisfied with the precision and specificity of artificial insemination, particularly since we no longer have the space, infrastructure, interest, or need to keep a bull.

Maggie's calves will be sold as milkers as they get older, and Stormy's calves will go in the freezer when the time comes. In this manner, we will be set for dairy and beef for the foreseeable future.