Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. We today are cohosting.

Glenda, you forgot to say that we were gonna kick the pig.

Well, you said that last time, and so I thought we'd start off with cohosting responsibilities today, And, I guess, kicking things. JKJK. So today, we're co-hosting, like we mentioned. So Colt and I are in the studio. I hope you don't hear the jackhammering.

If you've been to Orono recently and on main campus, there's a lot of jackhammering going on. So sorry about that, everybody.

Yeah. Like, right outside of the window. They've got the big excavator with the pneumatic hammer going to town outside.

But today, we're actually gonna be doing some promo for an upcoming event that, Colt is hosting as well as talking about some programming we did this past year, specifically artificial insemination.

Mhmm.

So this is the other AI. When I tell people AI and they're not in the livestock space, they think artificial intelligence.

It's so confusing.

Yeah. It's artificial insemination.

Because for the last thirty years, AI has meant artificial insemination in And our now AI artificial intelligence is, like, pushed its way into our everyday being. And now we have to clarify, which

Is okay.

And whenever you go to meetings or or anything, you have to sit through the joke about how AI the original AI and it's it's it's it gets tiresome. Yeah. It's haggard at this point.

Yeah. Yeah. But, it's still something that we find a lot of use, from. And just this past week, we had a field event where we were talking about how to make the most genetic gain, and you have to use AI. I mean, there's, really, not a better way to make genetic gain and really maximize on what your animal's potential is if you're not using artificial insemination just because the genetic tools that are at your fingertips, are incredible.

So, yeah, let's kind of start at the beginning where why did we start this AI topic? Why did we wanna do some programming? Because we 've been talking about this for a while now.

So one of the key components of Extension is a needs assessment. It's like when we audit livestock producers and ask them what their needs are for education from the university. And, traditionally, we've had, like, handwritten surveys or digital forms, and you all, as producers, know that you don't like to fill those things out. And so a lot of times, we just get word-of-mouth or when we do farm visits or when people call us or email us. And something that was coming up more frequently than not was, I would like to try artificial insemination.

Can you give us a technician name? Or can you give us the contact info of someone that can come to our farm and do it? And then once they try it, they're like, that seemed like I could do that. You know? And so Glenda and I thought, well, why don't we do some artificial insemination trainings?

And more importantly, too, there's always the issue of cows. So finding cows and so we'll talk about we'll we'll talk about swine and cattle, but specifically for cows, you know, most trainings that are offered tend to have a cow component, but that can be difficult. And we were kind of in the middle of all the, avian flu stuff too, which just brings a whole another issue to biosecurity on farms. So we had the opportunity to apply for money to find a simu simulators

that Shout out to the Mitchell Center.

Right. Was just gonna mention. So the Mitchell Center, we applied for a grant through the Mitchell Center here on campus. And we were able to get these simulators, which help us get closer to what the actual live animal, artificial insemination will be like, which has been always a challenge. Right?

And so we've talked to our colleagues from across the country, and they have the same challenges, finding herds, finding cows. Right? Because you have to hold back cows that you can't or do not breeds, etcetera. It can be challenging logistically. So we had the opportunity to find funds to have simulators.

So thank you, to the folks at the Mitchell Center.

And the National Pork Board.

And then so I was gonna say we got two simulation models. And so, we have a couple of more people to to tank to think.

Bangor State Fair and the Maine Beef Producers Association. So

so together through all those folks, we were able to successfully obtain the materials needed to conduct this artificial insemination training. And without those tools, you know, I think we would have been not as close to successfully training these folks as we were. Yeah. So some of the components we mentioned. So we got a, dairy cow simulator.

It's the bovine simulator.

And It's it's actually a Hereford because I specifically didn't buy the Holstein one. And

because a Hereford. And then we got the swine one too. So that's where the national pork board folks tie in. So we have both models. Because for other livestock species, caprin, the the caperine, caprin, and the, ovine.

So we don't tend to do as much artificial insemination in those two species.

It's not a simple process than It's sheep and a surgical procedure. And so we we typically don't see that as an on farm technique. That's, something that you have to get your veterinarian involved with.

Yeah. So we focus on swine and cattle. So we have simulators for both of those. And then we got all the rest of the equipment to be able to pull off the trainings. So this past year, we held three, four trainings, that were focused on two audiences.

We had, you know, youth, which we we we modified the training for. And then we had a full on adult geared, training. And we'll have one coming up the end of the year. So if you're listening to this right now and you wanna get, you know, practice for AI. So this is not an AI certification class.

You will not get a certificate, but you will be able to practice. And really, that's the goal. Right? We want to give you some of the tools that you'll be able to implement, on your own farm and to learn from. So when's that gonna be a cult?

December 6 at the Maine Cattlemen's College held in Augusta at the Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry.

Yep.

And here shortly, we will have our registration page open. I would say by the time that this podcast is aired, there will be a link for registration for that.

Yeah. So we'll tag that in the show notes. So save the date, December 6, where you will have an opportunity to train.

It's an all day training focused on cattle reproduction. Doctor Moda is gonna come in, and she's gonna talk about in vitro fertilization techniques. We're gonna Glenda and I are gonna talk about artificial insemination, not just the the hands on stuff, but we're gonna go over how hormone regulations and anatomy and physiology. But we're also gonna have a hands on component. So we're gonna have a a real liquid nitrogen tank there with with semen straws, and we're gonna have our simulators there.

And so everyone will get hands on practice from start to finish, plus the theory of why we do what we do.

Yeah. And so it's funny you say that because I teach animal genetics and breeding and selection. And when people take that class, they often think, oh, we're gonna learn artificial insemination and breeding. And everything we learn in that class comes before because there are so many things that need to be right. And you have to have a goal for your breeding program.

Really, you know, to some yes, artificial insemination can be difficult if the cow's not in heat, if your semen isn't, doesn't have good quality, if you don't have nitrogen in your liquid nitrogen tank, there's all things that can go wrong. But really, there's a whole component. So that's what we teach some of. We don't really do a deep dive, but we teach some of reading a

reprophysiologist to be an AI technician. You do need to know Doctor.

Understand all the components.

Some of the things why we do the practices. Because if you don't understand those, you might get lax in some of the practices, which will end up either killing the semen or you'll end up not depositing in the right place. And then it's a comedy of errors, right? So everything adds up. So we've got to reduce those mistakes to have successful.

Yeah. So let's start sort of with some of the background before we head to the AI piece. So, know, we talked briefly about this genetic gain. So in a herd or in a on a farm, you have to have a goal to where you're going, whether you're, you know, raising fiber, meat, milk, whatever you're doing, where do you wanna go? And, there's many different paths to get to where you wanna go.

But one of the ways that you can achieve that goal is through selecting the type of genetics that you have on your farm.

And 80% of all genetic improvement on the farm comes from the sire side. Yes. Because the sire can have more offspring.

Yep.

And through the use of artificial insemination, we can pick, you know, the top tier sires.

Exactly.

And we don't have to just go locally. Yep. You know, if if you have to have a bull, you're only gonna be able to source you source that bull locally because it'd probably cost too much to ship him in from Wyoming or or what have you. And that's that's why artificial insemination is so important. So we can select those top tier sires.

Yep. Especially because so in the way and it's compounding interest almost. So if you think about the current genetics on your herd, right, they're they're influenced by, like Colt mentioned, the sire. But if you bring in outside genetics, and especially a bull that's, you know, top for their current evaluation right now, then and you bring that bull in through AI, right, through artificial insemination, you're gonna improve your genetics slightly, and then you're gonna continue doing that. But let's take one of the more, common examples within dairy is net merit.

It's a value that we give to an animal, and it translates to the profitability over their entire life time. It's a dollar value. So net merit of 400 means that a cow or a bull that set that has an evaluation for $400 means that their offspring are likely to have or make $400 more above the population, the general population. And so when we think about genetics, we always think how does it relate back to the population. And so on your farm, let's say your you know, across your farm, your current net merit value of all of your cows is at 200.

You bring in a bull that's at 600. You might be able to make that within one or two generations. And so that's why we talk about it being compounding interest with artificial insemination and genetic gain because you're always gonna be improving because that sires that that sire that's external from your state or wherever you're located is always behind. Right? Maturity impacts that.

So for a bull to be reproductively able to mate cows and with artificial insemination, at the rate they're selecting which sires to use within our population, it's much quicker because they're genotyping all those sires. They know what those sires are gonna perform essentially. And so they can weed out the really good ones for a trait and the really bad ones for a trait, and then it can really, help you, keep right on track to make your goal. So that's just an example of how we talk about why genetic gain, really is maximized with artificial insemination.

And on the the non dairy side, because, you know, most of the dairy industry is purebred Holstein. But on our beef cattle and our pigs, something that we can really take advantage of is crossbreeding to increase the heterosis or the hybrid vigor. And realistically, if we do a good job selecting genetics on a year to year basis, every year's, the sire should be better than the previous year. And so with artificial insemination, we can always use the most up to date genetics on the sire side and make improvements. We can also use cross breeding to improve genetic performance of So our our f ones, where we take one purebred and breed them to the next.

Or then we take that first generation or f ones and breed them to another purebred sire of a different lineage and get f twos and really maximize the heterosis and maximize the genetic performance of those animals. And, you know, we have small farms in Maine. And so we can't do that with with live sires, because it was just you couldn't afford to buy a new bull or a new boar every single year, or keeping the different breeds separate. Yep. You know, and so that's where artificial insemination, it saves us money.

We don't have to have a boar on-site. We don't have to have a bull on-site. We don't have to keep separate breeds. So keep our pens all separated out. So we can really make a lot of improvements with artificial insemination and save money at the same time.

Yeah. Stay tuned for a crossbreeding episode because, I have so much information about crossbreeding, but that's something that we can capitalize, especially for health and fertility. So the hybrid vigor, is maximized for health and fertility. And so with crossbreeding, what we have to do and why it's important to use purebred population is because we have the most control for which traits are gonna be inherited from a purebred bull. Because during meiosis, there's a lot of crossing over of genetics and we can't force which genes are transmitted from the sire to the offspring.

But anyways, that's a topic for another day and we'll talk more about that. So let's move on to, in in the class. So some of the theory that we talk about in the class includes the estrous cycle. Right? So that's kind of critical to understand how all those hormones come into play when your animal's in heat.

Because if the timing's wrong, you can have the most expensive semen on the market. You're never gonna get your sow or your cow pregnant because your timing's off.

Yeah. We go over which hormones are produced by which gland or organ in the body and at what time they are produced and what those hormones control within the body and how it regulates the estrous cycle. And once we understand that, then we can understand that we can manipulate the estrous cycle. So how can we synchronize synchronize estrus in our herd, or how can we bring animals into estrus that were not in estrus and and so on and so forth. Yep.

But it's really complicated all how all the hormones interact. But once you understand the basics, it's really clear why we use what shots we do and when we use them and so on and so forth.

Yeah. And for a cow, for example, their estrous cycle is twenty one day period. So every twenty one days when they're cycling, you can expect a heat event or an estrous event. And really that's not the so when you when you actually see a cow being mounted or when she's what you think the most vocal, that's not when you should be breeding. You should be breeding on the AMPM rule.

So roughly, you know, ten to twelve to sixteen hours after you see that really spike in extras activity or like, you know, vocal activity, extras activity, what we call it. So that's important too. You know, a the ampereum rule Estrace detection.

Yeah. Super important. Yep. Timing of artificial insemination, because we want to sync ovulation and artificial insemination at the right times. And as you know, there's a wrong time to do that.

Because the semen isn't actually mature when it first enters the female. It needs some time to mature. The eggs, so to speak, need some time to migrate down the oviducts into the uterus. And so we have to hit that timing just perfect If we want to maximize the efficiency of our artificial insemination.

Let's talk estrus detection quickly.

I think we should go in-depth because estrus detection is the most difficult part of artificial insemination in pigs and cattle, in my opinion.

Well, just a couple let's do the the cliff notes because we we could have a whole episode on this because we've both done a lot of work on monitoring equipment for behaviors. But really what we're talking about is if you're using the eye test, which fails, 50% of the time. Why? Because we need to sleep. So we're not watching our animals, you know, twenty four hours of the day.

But the eye test, if that's all you have, is a good way to just

And when you say eye test, you're talking about looking for the vocalization, looking for the mounting behavior, looking at the swollen vulvas.

Yes. Yep. But something that's cheap and, you you know, readily available to everybody is using a some type of paint thing. So whether it's a tail mounted, Estratec patch Kmart. The the scratches off or Kmart or tail paint.

All of those methods can be really useful because every time you check it, it's you know, you should always, put more paint. You know, don't just put paint one day and then not put paint the next day because guess what? Those cows are gonna lick each other. They're gonna rub up on something. It's gonna come off, and you're gonna

that think aren't familiar. What we're doing is we're putting some kind of, like, scratch off sticker or paint on the tail head of the cows or heifers. And then when the other cows and heifers are mounting her as part of the estrous behavior, what we're doing is we are monitoring the animals that are being mounted. And then that's a a sign that those animals are coming into heat.

Yeah. Yeah. And and just make sure you keep up on seeing if it's the the tails the tail paints really well placed because it can come off and then you might think she's in heat and she's not actual in heat. So

So those will tell us that she's been mounted.

Right. Exactly.

But it doesn't tell us when

she was mounted.

The when is the more important part of the equation. Right?

Yeah. And that's why a lot of time, you know, sex semen is a really great tool that we can use. But if you don't have a if you're not using a synchronization protocol or if you don't have a good way to know when she exactly had the highest heat state so you can breed her off of that when she's ovulating, I tend to tell folks just use conventional semen. Don't go sexed because it's, you know, sometimes three times the cost. And so make sure you're getting your ester detection rate I'm sorry.

Your ester detection and your ester detection rate really high. So with activity monitors, for example, we can get estrus detection rate, which is simply 10 cows were in heat. We saw those 10 cows. We know when to breed them. So activity monitors and those are wearables and things, those can get pretty close to ninety percent.

So nine cows were in heat. I'm sorry. 10 cows were in heat. It detected nine. Whereas people, visual observation tends to be right around 40 to 50%.

So you only see half the cows that were actually in heat. And again, it's just because of the frequency.

And that's really important on the dairy side of things because watch for heat and breed. That's a technique, watch and breed.

Yep.

Is probably what most common that you'll see with most dairies. Yep. And then now that we have some of these technologies coming on board, they work amazingly well. And they're just and in simplest form, it's an ear tag with an accelerometer. And an accelerometer measures g forces in three different directions, forward and backwards, side to side, and up and down.

It's the same thing that's in your cell phone that triggers it to tell you that you're in landscape or portrait mode. Yep. It's just measuring you flipping it. A pedometer is just measuring the swinging motion of a leg. That's and it gives you and so the accelerometers gather all this data while they're in different activity levels.

So when they come into heat, they have a much higher activity level, And we can use some some pretty complicated algorithms to pick out those different behaviors to tell us that they're in heat. Yeah. And those algorithms work really, really well at dairy cattle. They're getting better in beef cattle. And wearable technology in pigs pigs like to tear technology off of their bodies.

So we're probably not gonna see a lot of wearable technology in pigs, but there's actually video camera technology in pigs that that works even better than the wearable technology. And in the barns of the future, it's gonna be real time. Yeah. Real time.

I'm excited for that type of AI, artificial intelligence, which is really just a recognition of things and through repeated repeated

There are some dairy barns that are using it commercially. Or not dairy, but

There are dairy barns.

But pigs on the video side.

Yep.

The the dairy, they're using it on the wearable side.

There's some there's some really cool video monitoring stuff. It's still in

The infancy.

Yeah. Yeah. I know pig barns are a little bit more advanced than other

Mhmm.

Livestock species. But, yeah, it's it's getting there.

They're not as open about it, though. The the pig folks as the the dairy or the dairy or the beef cattle folks are with their technology. But it's impressive. Yeah. It's impressive because it monitors their growth rate.

Yep.

Everything.

Yeah. Some pretty cool stuff. Alright. So before I'm gonna re listen to the topic at hand Heat detection. Heat detection.

Yes. So once we know when the cow's in heat, we can then make a decision. So like I mentioned, in cows, it's you know, anytime you really see her at her peak heat state, you wanna put semen in her anywhere from, I'd say, ten to sixteen hours after that. So that's why we tend to use the AMPM rule. I saw her really being vocal and kind of in this, you know, excited state in the morning.

I'm gonna breed her in the afternoon because that's when the she's gonna ovulate. So the follicle's gonna release the egg, and she's gonna have that egg travel into and if you're using artificial insemination, that's why it's important to deposit the semen right after the cervix. We don't recommend going into one of the horns unless, you know, you're a a really senior and practiced, technician that you you you know, you know your anatomy. And can I think

there's been some impromptu studies on that? And I don't think horn deposition is all it's it's made out to be.

Right. And and if everything's in place, right, if you you did it at the right time, that egg's gonna travel down in that semen if it's good quality. You know, you're checking your liquid nitrogen levels.

Mhmm.

You know, the the genetic companies really do a good job at making sure that the semen quality is there. It's all the other stuff. Right? Transportation of the semen to wherever it needs to get to, and that's why liquid nitrogen tanks and management is really critical. But all that stuff, if it's if it's, you know, properly managed, the semen and the egg will will make fertilization happen.

So estrus detection, estrus time, what is sort of the next thing that we want to talk about? I think maybe

Well, of go back to estrogen detection in beef cattle is the same as it is in dairy Most beef cattle producers are gonna use timed artificial insemination.

That's what I was ask. Do we wanna do protocols? Yes.

We'll talk about that next. But on the pig side, it's so much easier because pigs exhibit physical signs of heat that are very, very similar to cattle. They're more vocal. They mount each other. Their vulva swells up.

But when pigs are in standing heat, you can actually lean on their back, and they will just stand perfectly still, arch their backs, and their ears will just pop up forward, and they'll just stand there. Yep. And that's called standing heat in pigs. And then once we recognize standing heat in pigs, much like cattle, we wanna breed them twelve to twenty four hours later depending on whether they're a gilt or a sow. And the general rule with pigs is is we're gonna breed them once a day or every twelve hours until we get three doses of semen in.

Now on a practical level, you'll if you're good at it, you'll probably get them bred 90 something percent of the time with one dose of semen. But with two or three doses, our litter sizes increase drastically Yep. So to speak. Because whereas cows are ovulating one egg, pigs are ovulating a lot of eggs.

Yeah. Because they're a litter species. Yep.

So if if we can get more semen in over a period of time, we can we can get more fertilization to occur. So litter size is where it's what it's all about in pigs.

Yep. Yeah.

But the

The cool thing and fun fact about pig semen

There's a lot of stuff. Think I know where you're going for this.

Yeah. You can't freeze pig semen. It's really sensitive. So that's different than cow semen. So that's another thing to consider on your farm.

Know?

Pig semen is shipped fresh.

How how to handle it? Stored at

about 64 degrees. And it'll last when it's not blazing hot summer temperatures, it'll last ten, twelve days. Yep. And all you have to do is just rotate it gently once or twice a day. Yep.

And it's perfectly fine. I've seen pig semen. People use it in a pinch when it's two or three weeks old Yep. And still get fertilization.

And it comes in these almost IV like bags or the ones that I've seen in.

They they either come in something that looks like a clear toothpaste Yep. Tube or just a little bottle. Yep. A little plastic bottle. Looks like an enema bottle or something.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. Pig semen's really unique.

And pigs have a corkscrew shaped penis.

Yeah.

And the cervix on the sow is, you know, the reciprocal of that. So you can actually buy AI rods that have a corkscrew on So you can literally thread the AI rod into the sow's cervix. And so you know exactly where you're at. No palpation required. Super easy.

Pig AI is the easiest on the farm, unless maybe you do chickens. But whereas cattle, we actually have to palpate and feel around. And it's really difficult to pass a rod through the cervix on a cow.

Yeah. You have to.

It's an acquired Yeah. I can teach an eight year old AI pigs.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, since we're kind of here, we'll just talk quickly about synchronization protocols. So a couple of things I always recommend. You know, one of the things that you have to think about is infrastructure. So if you're gonna be giving shots to animals, is there a place on your farm where you can handle them appropriately? Because some of these protocols, you know, like a a double upstream protocol in in cows, whether it's beef or dairy, you know, it requires, like, every seven days or more frequently.

It requires you to harness them somewhere, you know, in a shoot or tie them up somewhere and give them a shot. So you have to make time because, again, like we said, if you're gonna do a synchronization protocol, but it's not timed correctly, well, you're wasting your time and your money. So think about these things ahead of time before you implement a synchronization protocol. And then, of course, you have to work with your vet because they're gonna have to prescribe you these hormones. So those are just a couple of things to keep in mind.

And on the on the beef side of things, we usually use a timed IA pro or

A timed artificial insemination.

Protocol. And and so and then we will breed all the the entire herd with artificial insemination. But then we put the cows in with a bull. You don't really see that in the dairy world. And we call it a cleanup bull.

So anything that we missed with AI and if we do a good job, we're probably 85% Yeah. On AI in beef cattle. Some people are better. Some people are worse. But still, we don't want 15 or 20% of the herd to go unbred.

So we'll put a a bull in for thirty or forty five days. Yeah. Keep the the calving interval tight.

Right. Exactly. Yep. So that's another thing to consider. When are you gonna be calving out?

For beef cows, it tends to be different because, you know, in most dairies, we have a space where it can be indoors. So you can calve out in the winter.

You need milk year round.

And we don't and we tend to, you know, kind of raise the the calves. Whereas in a beef operation, it tends to be calves are raised on the dam. So, you know, calving in the middle of a snowstorm doesn't really fare out well for that calf in that dam. So seasonality is another thing to consider. And how do we control that estrus cycle and and decrease the time of when those cows can be in estrus?

And that's what you were talking about, synchronizing them, putting the bull in. So then, you know, after this date, no more cows are being bred, which then means that they can start calving, I don't know, March or April, depending on where you live in The United States. So then they have a successful calving that's not in six feet of snow.

Yeah. And on the pig side of things, commercially, they just those those pigs are raised in environmentally controlled barns, and so they keep them pregnant all

the time.

So it doesn't really matter what time of year for them on and everybody's wanting to buy ribs and bacon three hundred sixty five days a year. So there's no seasonality to that. On the beef side, we need them to calve either in the spring or the fall so that we hit our markets. Plus, we have environmental conditions on our side. And so timed AI is critical on the beef side.

Not so much on the pig side. Yeah. Unless you live in a small population like Maine and then you only want to have one litter of pigs a year.

Right.

Then it becomes more crucial because, you know, we don't want them to be born in the harsh, nasty weather. Yep. But we also don't want to feed them over the wintertime. Right. So, yeah, breeding them in the right time of the year is important.

Yeah. And that's why another tangent, but you can make so much genetic progress with species like swine and poultry because you have multiple, essentially, like pregnancies during the year. And so by the time that you have those performance traits values back, it's quick. Right? With dairy cows, you gotta wait two years for milk production performance.

With beef cows, you know, weaning if you're using weaning weight as your measure for how well the sire is making this offspring, you gotta wait at least thirteen months. I'm sorry. A yearling weight, not weaning weight, but both. So I guess weaning weight would be six to nine months and then

Plus gestational interval.

Right. Plus the gestation interval. But so it's a long time. Whereas with pigs, you know, in a year, you can know how that sire performed because you just On two litters. Get it quickly turned around.

So it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Pigs are fun because you can have two and a half litters a year on average.

Yep.

So one year you could have three and then or two, and then next year you'll have three. And then the next year you have two, and the next year you have three. So you can really crank it out on pigs.

Yep. Yeah. The generation the generation intervals.

And they're ready to eat in five or six months. You know, on on the cow side, they're just waning them out of five or six Right.

Yeah. So we talked quickly and I don't wanna dive in more deep into synchronization protocols. There's so many online. Like I mentioned, find one that works for you. Can you be, you know, confining cows somewhere where you can handle them?

And stick to the recipe on those. Right. There's no room for fudge factor on those those protocols.

Yep. Yeah. They're pretty clear cut and dry. And like we mentioned, make sure the timing's right. You know, if it says, you know, breed sixteen hours after this, you know, one hormone was administered, do that.

If you do twenty hours, twenty four hours after that, you've missed your window. So follow the protocol, as strictly as you can. So we talked, I think, about almost everything. We talked estrogen detection rate. We talked hormones.

We talked a little bit about anatomy. So corkscrew for swine. And then for cattle, we've got cervix, and it's pretty cut and dry. You just, you know, have if you can figure out how to get through the three rings of the cervix, you can deposit the semen appropriately. Was there anything else that we missed and what folks can look forward to from our

So if if someone wanted to attend one of our AI clinics, what could they expect to do and learn? Yeah. And I think the most critical part is they're usually two days. In the future, if we can source some live animals, there'll be three days. But right now, it's just two days with the simulators.

We're gonna spend, like, the first morning going over anatomy and physiology, semen handling, and then we're gonna go and switch gears and start practicing handling semen with real liquid nitrogen tank. We're gonna load semen into or simulated semen into our AI guns or our AI straws, and then we're gonna practice depositing that into the female with our simulators.

Yep.

Plus, on the cow side of things, we're gonna have some female reproductive tracts laid out on trays so you can actually palpate and feel what it's like to handle a cervix. You actually can take your fingers and feel what what corpus luteum and follicles are like on the ovals. And I think that's really handy to be able to do that. Plus, you're actually gonna practice passing AI guns in real tracks.

Right.

So you'll know exactly what it feels like when you're doing it in a real animal. Now, the simulators are not like real animals, as in, you know, nothing replaces flesh and blood, but it does give you a guide on, like, where to put your hands, how to manipulate the tracks, so on and so forth. So it's kinda like welding. I mean, if you don't practice on a regular braces, you'll never get great at it. But you do have to practice.

And and this class is a great place to come and get

Some of that practice. Yeah. And I think, like you mentioned, even though we don't have the Lifecal, put all the components together. Right? So with a simulator, you know, I think the sweeping motion that we do to find the cervix, that's really, you know, what we're trying to teach in that aspect.

And we've got a simulator that has a three d printed cow pelvis in it.

You can Yep. Feel like because that's the first thing you do when you're palpating. Right? You're like, I go in through the rectum and then I sweep the floor. I find the pelvis.

So I know that the cervix has to be right above there or somewhere in that area. So we're do we're practicing that motion. And then the second component is passing a rod through an actual cervix. And we have heifers. We have cows.

So we have both of them, which as you have more calves, you know, your cervix, and your your parts tend to be bigger because your uterus expands as you have more calves. So those two feel different too. So we have a multitude of of easy or hard cervixes to pass a rod through. And then the semen handling component, like you mentioned, that's

That's probably really the most important part?

Yeah. Yeah. So setting up your gun, timing it correctly because semen, even though it's

not It's fragile.

Cattle semen is not as fragile as fig semen. It still is. And so, you know, we take it from I can't remember. Is it 300 Fahrenheit to

It's negative 330 some it's a 196 centigrade negative, a 196 centigrade.

Two body temperature. So there's a lot of things that could go wrong with your semen handling, and so we practice that as well.

And and, know, just moving it in and out of the liquid nitrogen is a real critical point. I mean, you can you can kill the entire straw worth of semen if you don't do it properly. Or if you're just, you know, like, oh, let me just look at this a little longer here or there. So keeping that stuff alive, crucial. Yep.

Thawing it out, crucial. Depositing it, crucial. Heat detection, crucial. So everything adds up. If you make a mistake here, you know, you can't just recover in the next step.

It's all critical control points.

Yep. Yeah.

Pigs way easier. The pig simulator works much more closely to a real animal.

Right.

The pig simulator is is is a lot better than the cow simulator. But, you know, it's the best we got.

Yeah.

Yeah. But we do have real tracks for the cows. So a lot of practice.

Yeah. And I I think we have we have a lot to offer folks. So don't forget to save the date for the Maine Cattlemen's College on 12/06/2025. Folks can sign up and get come get some training on artificial insemination and then look forward to our 2026 dates. We'll have a few workshops throughout the year as well.

And with that, do you wanna close-up shop here today?

Yeah. I'm gonna get home to the new baby. Oh, Glenda wants me to tell you that if you have questions, comments, or concerns, please email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu. We did it.