Flushing can be a very effective way to drastically increase the influence of a female much like AI has increased the influence of sires. However, before flushing a cow you must have a plan. A couple of questions to ask yourself are: Is this cow valuable to others in the purebred business, not just to me? Will I have a strong enough market for her offspring to justify the increased cost of ET? Can I afford to take a loss if she doesn't produce any embryos or if none make pregnancies? How does holding my commercial cows open to use as recips affect my bottom line/breeding plan if they end up open?
All of those are questions that you must answer before you even begin an ET program. Now if you have answered those questions and you still want to try your hand at it, there are a couple ways to go about it. The one that we use and that is the most cost effective is to give all of the set up shots ourselves and then do the AI'ing ourselves. We get all of the drugs along with a regimen from our embryologist. We usually coordinate ours with someone else in the area so that the embryologist doesn't have to come down to flush one cow. The flushing is done on farm, but like I said most often it is at someone elses place since our facilities aren't quite the quality necessary..... they would work if forced to use them. We then either freeze the embryos or do live transfer. You can also take the donor to an ET facility and have them do everything for you. It is more expensive and in my opinion doesn't work as well. It is better to keep cows at home where they are not stressed by new surroundings, as well as the ability to feed and maintain the female like you want. There is also less risk of disease.
As far as costs go, drugs and semen typically run between $300 and $500 depending on the cost of the semen and then you have additional costs for synchronizing the recips. Flushing if I remember correctly costs $200 or $250. Then to freeze or transfer is $50 per embryo. So if you get 5 embryos which is slightly above average, and do live transfer, your cost would be roughly $1,000. Now this is give or take a couple hundred depending on cost of semen, embryologist charges which could differ from ours, boarding fees if you take the donor to the collection facility, AI'ing and shot costs if someone else does it for you. The best way to estimate your cost would be to find a embryologist that is close to you and that somebody you know uses and talk with them about it.
Hope this helps some..... I know it is a little lengthy but there is a lot to consider.
