Big Oaks Little Farm

One problem that we have run into having a family milk cow is getting her bred in order to keep her in milk. In October of 2023, Jamie officially solved this problem by getting trained in artificial insemination and pregnancy detection in cattle!

In order to have a dairy cow that continues to produce milk for your family, you have to breed her about once a year. There is a bit more to it than that as far as timing and when you cow needs to be dried up and how far apart you should be breeding, but I will save that for another post.

In the past, we have taken our milk cows to a vet in order to have them artificially inseminated and unless you want to keep a bull, you will have to do that too in order to keep your cow in milk. Here is how the process works when you are taking your cow to the vet for A.I.:

Step 1: Load cow in the trailer to go the vet for a GnRH injection and to have a CIDR insert placed. This begins to sync the cow’s heat cycle. If your cow is in milk you have to take her home. If you are not currently milking daily most places will let you leave your cow fow a boarding fee.

Step 2: After 7 days, bring the cow back to the vet to have the CIDR removed and get a prostaglandin injection. Again, if the cow is in milk, take her back home.

Step 3: When 3 days have passed bring her back into the vet so that he can perform the artificial insemination.

That is THREE trips to and from the vet in a trailer. We do no own a livestock trailer. For us, that meant the we had to rely on the kindness of neighbors to let us borrow their trailer for the back and forth. The other issue is that cows tend to not love riding down the highway in a trailer. By the third time you are loading her up, she is NOT interested in taking a trip.

In addition to the inconvenient travel, when using a vet you generally cannot wait and watch and just catch the day they go in heat. The vet might not be available that day to get your cow in the A.I. or you might not be able to make it that day either. In order to time it in a way that works with taking them into the vet, you have to give them all of these hormone injections to force their body into heat.

With all of that in mind, Thomas and I decided that, for our farm, we wanted to do it differently and do it at home. We called around to try to find someone that knew how to A.I. that was willing to come out and do just one cow, but were not successful in that search. No one wanted to travel unless it was to AI a whole herd.

So we came up with our own solution! We saved up the money to send me (Jamie) to A.I. school! I was so thrilled to have this opportunity and the crew at Champion Genetics were AMAZING. I learned so much and left feeling confident that not only could I detect my cow’s heat myself, but I could perform her A.I. myself as well. In fact, I want to be able to offer a different solution for other local farms as well. I decided that since no one wanted to come out to a small family farm for A.I. only one cow, that I would be that person. I hope to get my name out locally to help other farms who don’t want the repeated trips to the vet. I want to work with local farm to give them the option on syncing their cow for convenience or learning how to detect heat well enough that they know when to make the call for me to come perform the A.I.

So if that is you and you want to take about what it would look like to have me help you get your family milk cow bred, give me a shout! I would love to talk to you about it.