Cead Mile Failte !

A 'hundred thousand welcomes' to friends of all things Irish, organic, and environmentally friendly. I hope you enjoy my anecdotes and little vignettes. I appreciate comments. If you like it, why not become a follower? Click on Archive and then scroll down to the very bottom for the beginning of our story. Or see: http://Ioncehadafarminireland.blogspot.com/
(©2010)

Friday, September 10, 2010

What 16 year-olds know about Farming & the AI man

In an earlier post I mentioned that a big percentage of Georgia( biggest grower of peaches in US) kids believe peaches grow in a tin. Here are some gems from a GED test. Are you ready?
Q. What is artificial insemination?
A. When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Q. How can you delay milk turning sour
A. Keep it in the cow

Q. What are steroids
A. Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs

Artificial Insemination, AI in short (and that is not artificial/alien intelligence), is done when the farm doesn't own a bull or the bull is not performing yet. Sometimes you also want to keep calving restricted to a certain time frame--and your vigorous bull is hard to keep away.
The AI man is usually a vet who arrives with cooling boxes in the trunk. Containers keep the sperm chilled until needed. The COWS have to be lined up in a one lane pen, ours was built out of timber, so that they go in one after another. Instead of opening the gates leading up to that paddock, he climbed them. Since you need two hands to climb a gate -when you are over 40 or so- he had to have his hands free. The syringe containing the bovine sperm went between his lips. He didn't talk until he reached the pen and took the syringe out ready to inseminate each cow standing behind them.They were separated from each other by a wooden barrier so that he wasn't kicked too often. He worked his way back to the line in no time. Another day's work done. In our second year we acquired Ismael who did the work for us. He was of a good-natured temperament, brown and very furry, not too big and had no horns. I was still in awe of him when passing through his field.

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