Riding Shotgun
Unsung Heroes
As we travel the highways and by-ways of the Limousin family and
breed we often cuss and discuss the cattle business, sports, politics,
great cheeseburgers and most of the time, the promotion and
marketing of Limousin cattle.
Through “Riding Shotgun” we invite you to join us in the right-
hand seat, so that we can let you in on what we find to be our
marketing pet peeves, shortcuts and some of the favorite habits of
top-flight professional producers. Grab a cup of coffee and take the
‘shotgun seat’—we are pleased to have you riding along.
I
’ve always been intrigued by inventions and innovations that make
our lives easier and better and I’m not talking about the obvious
ones like the internal combustion engine or the Apple i-Phone. As
many of you know who are my friends, I’m more into things like the
always ready sump pump and the ever present leaf blower.
In this issue saluting Herd Bulls I would like to offer up several other
unsung innovators that changed an industry and have an impact on
many of you every day.
The first unsung hero shows up when you google Artificial
Insemination. I immediately found an article written by Cicely A.
Richards that says, “The University of Florida Institute of Food and
Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) Extension states that documents from
approximately 1322 A.D. found an Arab chieftain who wanted to
mate his prized mare with a stallion owned by an enemy. He used
cotton containing the scent of the female to excite the stallion, causing
him to ejaculate. He placed the released semen in the reproductive
tract of the mare, leading to conception.”
Sneaky but innovative. He was a smart guy with a need, little did he
know that he would change an entire industry.
The next guy in line was the one who decided he could freeze semen
and store it. This guy is more of an unsung hero. Wikipedia doesn’t
give any one guy credit, but claims the first semen was frozen in the
’50s and the dairy business was the main user. It is obvious cows were
being milked every day and were easy to catch in heat and breed.
These unsung heroes worked out the details and turned it over to the
cowboys and that’s when things really got western.
My earliest memory of artificial insemination involves a trip to
the bus station. In the early days of semen transport, if you wanted
semen, you needed to contact the breeder or the bull stud rep and
hopefully he was coming your way and could bring the semen with
him and deliver it to your tank. But, if you wanted a bull that wasn’t
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offered by your local rep, you had to arrange shipment from their
bus station to yours. We would go meet the bus and transfer the
semen, then arrange for shipment of the tank back to the original
owner and hope no one turned the tank over or spilled the nitrogen.
Needless to say, you didn’t decide to AI tomorrow and hope the
semen came overnight.
Up steps my next cowboy inventor, the innovative UPS or FedEx
guy that looked at that turned over tank and decided to invent the
vapor shipper. He filled a tank with sponge, cored out the center,
filled it with liquid nitrogen and made every cowboy that lives in
a far-flung location a very happy camper. Not only would semen
arrive intact, you could put it on a plane, bounce it around in a
pickup and drop the tank on a conveyor belt. Somebody buy that
guy a beer!
That brings us to you, the lucky producer. In the last 70 years, the
dairy and beef industry has taken Artificial Insemination and brought
it to the masses. You can browse the pages of this magazine and put
together your wish list and get some of the top genetics in the industry
today delivered to you door, ready to be added to your program. All of
this can be done for a fairly reasonable price when you think about the
alternative. When you have that one female that can work to the bull
of your dreams, you don’t have to go buy the whole bull, you can just
buy the 12 million cells you need, arrange for your female to come in
heat and start the next generation.
Modern artificial insemination and semen transfer makes it possible
to make massive improvement in real time. The breeders and bulls that
offer the genetics are the main stars of this interaction, they are the
catalyst for change and improvement. Look through the pages of this
magazine and think about how these bulls can improve your program
and the cattle you produce. Then, the next time you’re looking at
your favorite female or your tremendous calf crop and realize they are
the products of artificial insemination, don’t forget to tip your cap to
that long-lost Arab Chieftain, and while you’re at it, give a wave to
the UPS guy.
See you down the road.
• APRIL 2020
CONTACT THE AUTHOR
Mark A. Smith
email: [email protected]
phone: 515-229-5227