Pre-joining Bull Assessment
Young bulls are unproven, and older bulls may develop issues overtime. Therefore, we recommend that a breeding soundness examination should be carried out on all bulls prior to joining on an annual basis, in order to achieve maximum bull performance during the mating period and reduce the risk of catastrophes come pregnancy testing or calving time.
Assessment includes body condition scoring, structural soundness, reproductive examination and collection of a semen sample. Semen is assessed crush side to see how many sperm are alive and moving forward. A small sample from each bull is fixed in formalin and is sent to an external laboratory to be assessed for morphology using a special, high power DIC microscope and special stains. This shows whether the sperm are normal in size and shape, which cannot be done accurately crush side. Some bulls produce adequate live sperm, but inadequate normal sperm. This means their sperm are able to swim to the cow’s egg, but either cannot fertilise it or the egg is fertilised but the embryo dies before the pregnancy goes full term. If you would like to book your bulls in for a pre-joining assessment, please get in contact with us. Ideally, this should be conducted 8 weeks prior to joining, however many clients choose to do this earlier in the year prior to the major bull sales.
Custom Semen Collection
We offer custom, on-farm collection of bovine semen (for domestic use only). This services offers producers the ability to store frozen semen for use in artificial breeding programs, and also offers a backup genetic solution for if the bull is unfortunately injured or becomes deceased. Once collected, semen is sent to an external laboratory for further evaluation and processing if of adequate quality. Poor quality semen can, unfortunately, result is lowered conception rates. This is why we choose to use an external laboratory with vigorous quality assurance protocols in place to ensure only high-quality semen is processed and stored.
AI Semen Quality Assurance (QA)
It is not uncommon for a less than desirable conception rate to be encountered following at AI or ET program, despite producer’s best efforts to prepare the females well and follow protocols strictly. One factor that can contribute to this is poor semen quality. This can occur due to poor semen being frozen, or good quality semen being damage while in storage or transit. We highly recommend that semen is evaluated prior to the start of an artificial breeding program, to reduce the risk of poor-quality semen reducing conception rates. We work with producers to develop on-farm QA protocols to ensure the highest quality semen is being used, prior to the start of their artificial breeding programs.
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