Proud of my dad

This past weekend, on one of our frequent phone calls to and from the farm, my dad and I were discussing our upcoming breeding season. He had called last week to let me know that Pete (our Genex genetics provider) would be stopping by, and wondering if we had selected our sires for the upcoming breeding season.

It's pretty early for us to select a sire for the next breeding season, mainly because we haven't seen what last year's studs are doing (read: no calves on the ground out of those sires). But, my dad and I are learning from our mistakes. 2009 was just a year of chaos - for both the farm and family. I remember getting ready to board a flight to Scotland for our honeymoon and trying to get ahold of Pete to deliver semen so I'd have something to breed cows to when I returned. We don't want to relive that experience (and stress) again.

So, my dad, Eric and myself put our heads together and narrowed the semen possibilities. We decided to go with Messmer Packer, and got 30 units on him. You see, when we first started AI-ing we bred to multiple sire groups. But when you only breed 30 cows AI/year, there's not a whole lot of progeny to get a sample on each bull. Thus, we're going to use one or two sires to get a good number of progeny (calves). We're pretty excited because we'll have Packer calves born this year (2010), and next year.

But I'm not only proud of my dad because he's got the semen ordered (and in the tank) by February (and we breed in May), but because he's going to take an AI class. For the past 10 years, I've been the only one trained on our farm to AI. That's great when you're a college kid and you live close to home around May to breed heifers and cows, but it's not convenient when you live 370 miles away in another state. So, dad's going to get trained. We'll be able to shoulder the load of breeding cows together (and maybe a local 4-H gal will learn, too). Either way, our operation will be better because of it.