Technology to assist breeders at Pietersburg Vet Clinic

POLOKWANE-Farming in the modern sense is not what it used to be, thanks to modern technological advancements.

Scientific ways to ensure the best stud or genes are invented at a more rapid pace than in the past.

To assist breeders in the process, Pietersburg Vet Clinic now offers a service where a bull’s semen can be extracted and frozen until it is needed.

Veterinary sister Arona Cremona explains how the service works:

“A farmer might have a bull with good genetics and would like to use this in the future. We get a small sample of semen that will be split into roughly 60 samples to later inseminate cows.”

The semen sample is frozen in liquid nitrogen.

“By making use of this method to inseminate cows, up to 600 cows can be inseminated in one day which means all of them will calf in the same time window.”

With the cost of bulls, farmers can also pool with their neighbours to buy semen and inseminate more than one herd, she explained.

Another use for the frozen semen is to impregnate cows that are of a lesser gene pool.

Cremona explains: “Sometimes you have a cow that has all the right genes but which does not have the required maternal instincts. On the other hand you may have a cow with the right instincts, but of a lesser gene pool. We then get the cow to ovulate and withdraw an ovum, and fertilise her ovum with the bull’s semen, implanting it into the cow with the poorer genes.”

By making use of these methods, more farmers will have herds with good qualities, she concluded.