No Bull! at Gardendwellers Farm & Ranch

We have many enterprises here at Gardendwellers Farm & Ranch, from our pasture raised lamb and chicken, to our freeze dried culinary herbs and herbal sheep milk soaps. We also have a couple jersey cows that we raise to provide nutrient dense, delicious milk for our family, feeding the pigs, chickens, and extra lambs, as well as a calf each year to either grow our herd, sell, or raise for beef. We LOVE our Jerseys and the bounty they provide our family; amazing butter, ghee, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream! Though they aren’t the focus of our farm business, the milk cows are the heart of our homestead.  

For a cow to produce milk, she needs to be bred and have a calf each year. For folks like us that just have a couple of cows, it doesn’t make sense to keep a bull around for a number of reasons. They are expensive to buy, cost a fortune to feed, and are very hard on fencing and anything that seems fun to destroy! We really don’t have the facilities to keep and handle a bull well and we have young children to keep safe.  

If beef cows are the pickup truck of cows, dairy cows are the high-performance sports cars. Dairy cows from commercial genetics are great converters of feed into large amounts of milk. The average  commercial dairy cow produces 6-12 gallons of milk per day, depending on breed, genetics, and  nutrition. The problem is that they produce so much milk (and butterfat in the case of Jerseys), that it  can be at the expense of their own health. They are hard to keep in good body condition without large  inputs of grain and alfalfa. Their calories go into making milk before body condition. Having a lower body  condition can cause them to have fertility problems, and a number of other issues. Metabolic illnesses after calving are common, as the cow draws calcium from her own bones and muscles to produce milk.  Dairy cattle are high input, high output animals. As homesteaders, we would rather have cows that  produce a little less milk while staying healthy on pasture or hay, with less grain, less problems, and a  longer productive life. I want to look out into our pastures at our family milk cows that have slick shiny coats and little more meat on their bones. 

By using artificial insemination we can breed our cows to a different breed of bull that has more of the traits we want to reach this goal of a heifer calf that will grow into an easy keeping, lower maintenance cow. Some of the larger semen suppliers are now offering grass fed genetic dairy bulls, but there are many smaller companies that sell some unique dual-purpose breed semen. Did you know that you can even buy SEXED semen?! That means you can breed to get a heifer calf if you’re looking to add a  replacement female, or a bull calf if you’re wanting to raise it for beef, with 90% accuracy! Typically,  sexed semen isn’t available for the less mainstream breeds, but there’s semen out there for everybody’s  breeding goals. 

I have had a dream to learn how to artificially inseminate cattle for years now. I thought that if I  learned how we wouldn’t need to keep a bull, we could customize our genetics to our operation, and  that maybe I could explore doing AI for others as another income stream for the farm someday since there seems to be a shortage of AI technicians in the area. After lots of Googling, I came across an AI School put on by Badlands Genetics and ABS Global, led by Don and Sarah Nordby, in Dickinson, and signed up! The three-day school is held towards the end of each April. It’s geared towards beef producers, but most of what we learned applies to dairy cattle as well. The first portion of each day was spent in the classroom at Dickinson State University learning the details of AI, and the afternoons were spent at the stockyard practicing on cows. 

Warning: This next detailed section may not be for everyone so you can skip to the last paragraph. We spent day one learning about anatomy and physiology, and basically how to find the cow’s cervix and pass an AI gun through. We got to try our AI guns on some cadaver reproductive tracts in the classroom before they turned us loose on live cows at the stockyard that afternoon. After getting lost on my way to the stockyard, I arrived late, with everybody else shoulder deep in the lineup of cows already. I waited my turn for a cow to become available. The cows used were all cull beef cows, about twenty of them. We had new cows to practice with each afternoon. I gloved up, the kind that goes all the way to your shoulder, lubed up, and yep.….. gently worked my left hand into the cow’s rectum! You grab and manipulate the cow’s cervix with your left hand, through the rectal wall. It’s best to use your left hand because the cow’s rumen takes up most of the room on her left side, so the  reproductive tract tends to lean to the right. Once you have identified and grabbed a hold of the cervix, which has been described as feeling like a turkey neck, you begin to work your AI gun in with your right hand, then manipulate the cervix over the AI gun. This was much harder to do than I anticipated! There are a lot of folds and wrinkles that your gun can get hung up on that might make you think you’re in the right spot. Proper semen placement is crucial. Since most of the work is done with the left hand (I am  right-handed) through a slippery rectal wall, it does take quite a bit of hand strength and stamina. After trying on several cows and succeeding on the ones I had some help with, I left for the day feeling tired and pretty humbled at how challenging this was.

Day two in the classroom we focused on semen handling, heat detection and synchronization, and nutrition. Semen is stored in -320 degree liquid nitrogen tanks, so safety is a priority, and so is not lifting the remaining semen above the frost line so it remains viable. Day two’s afternoon in the  stockyard went better! I was able to pass my AI gun through several cows with little help. There were a  few late-bred cull cows in the mix, so I asked the instructors if they could teach me how to “preg check”  cows, and they did! I was able to feel the difference between a bred and open cow. I felt like I was maybe  getting this now.  

Day three in the classroom we learned more about the genetics side of things and bull selection. The final afternoon in the stockyards, I surprised myself by being able to quickly find and pass through the cervix of eight cows, all without help! It was hard to hide the smile on my face. After we ungloved, we all got a handshake and certificate. It was such a great experience. The instructor invited me to come back to class, for no charge, another year to refresh my memory if I ever need to. 

There are so many factors into how successful AI is or isn’t. Success rates are about 70% on first service by trained AI technicians. Even if I need to try several times on our own cows, it still outweighs keeping a bull on the farm. I highly recommend taking this class if you want to bring better genetics into your herd and don’t want to keep a bull. I am still a beginner at this, and definitely not ready to make a career out of it yet, but I feel like I now have enough skill to AI my own cows and maybe even help some  neighbors out if the need arises!

Thank you to FARRMS for selecting me as a conference support recipient so I could attend this course and learn about something I have been always been interested in!