A friend of mine who has been in the cattle business for years told me when he was starting to ai and didn't have a clean up bull at the time would give the cow more then one straw at ai time to increase conception rates. Would that really work?
A I more then one straw
- Thread starter nobull82
- Start date
Help Support CattleToday:
nobull82":u8lve1zp said:
I was afraid one of my post had spawned your question. I doubt it would help. If the egg is where it needs to be, there should be enough sperm cells in one straw to do it.
Now 2 straws 12 hours apart that's pure gold
branguscowgirl
Well-known member
I have done it many times. It helps if they have a long standing heat, (which mine often do.) If I breed them 12-14 hrs after they stand and they are still in the next day, I breed them again.Bigfoot":3266mq14 said:
I have a cow that was trouble to get bred, (think I know why now.) The vet put 2 straws in her yesterday. However it was semen from a home grown bull, so very little expense.
cow pollinater
Well-known member
Not really. If you buy semen from a reputable source it has to have a certain number of viable semen in it to qualify as saleable semen and it is not a direct case of more is better as we'd all like to think. They have a formula that dictates how much semen it would take to improve conception above and beyond a certain point and it would take more than two straws to make any difference unless the individual bull isn't producing quality semen, in which case more is the only chance of making it better.nobull82":31wuqi6z said:
Example: when sorted semen first came on the market a lot of guys would try to use two straws(at significant expense) to improve conception but their results were only marginally better than anyone else's. It would take around six straws of the originally packaged sorted semen to reliably improve conception rates beyond what was in one straw... The producers have a benchmark in mind and know that they have to have X amount in every straw to achieve that benchmark.
The only real additional advantage to using two straws is if you do it twelve hours apart so that every cow has semen in the right place at the right time as they all ovulate at different times during the process but even then you're money ahead to just breed them once and then wait twenty one days and do it again. If you have to breed a beef cow three times then you're justified in treating her like she needs extra help to breed up but there's no reason to treat them like that before then.
