Life of an Artificial Inseminator

Brett Langdell
COLD HOLLOW CAREER CENTER
Age 15

Life of an Artificial Inseminator

My dad visits most of the farms in Franklin County every month. My dad is an Artificial Inseminator, which means he breeds the cows artificially instead of having the bull breed the cow. The farmer has a wider variety of bulls and a choice of the best bulls.
My dad gets up at 6:00 in the morning and gets ready for work. He leaves around 7:00 for his first stop. The farmers call into a phone system which informs the breeders what farm they have to go to, and how many animals they have to breed, and what semen they want to use. My dad and two other breeders split up all the calls. When my dad shows up to the barn he checks the charts to see what number cow and what kind of semen he has to use. Then he goes out to his semen tank and gets the semen he needs. He has to warm it up so the sperm will work because it is stored in a tank in liquid nitrogen that is kept at -320 degrees. He has to warm it up so the semen will work when it is put in the cow. He has a semen gun to inject it in the cow. The first thing he has to do is insert his gloved hand in the rectum and pull all the extra manure out of the cows’ anus so he has more of a sense of what he is doing. Then he finds the cervix through the rectum and with his other hand puts the semen gun through the vagina, through the cervix and to the uterus and injects the semen. Then hopefully the sperm will fertilize the egg and the cow will be pregnant.
There is a lot of equipment that he needs to do his job. The most important equipment is the semen straws and the semen tank. The next important equipment is the semen guns. The way he gets the equipment and semen are he meets a truck at a truck stop in St. Albans. He picks them up from the truck driver that brings the supplies to all the breeders in the state.
There are a lot of steps in the important job of artificial insemination. Cows have to artificially inseminate because sometimes the bulls sometimes just don’t do a good enough job getting the cows pregnant. Another reason they inseminate artificially is the danger of having a bull on the farm and also the diseases the bull can spread. Most of the farmers in Franklin County artificially inseminate their cows because it just gets the job done better.