After months of prepping our bucks and teaser does, and despite a few kinks, we had a VERY successful collection with the help of a new friend who let us use her farm – and another who let us use her teaser doe when NONE of ours came into heat on time. And of course, massive thanks to Levi and Alex at CryoCaprine for doing the actual collection.
So here’s what we did:
Prepping Bucks
About 3 months ago, we started flushing the bucks with super healthy feed. We mixed 16% protein grower pellets with beet pulp, oats, rice bran, and flax. We eventually ran out of oats and swapped them for roasted soybeans. We also gave the boys unlimited 2nd-3rd crop alfalfa and Sweetlix Meat Maker & ZinPro minerals, along with a selenium salt block. We also gave them Replamin vitamins every couple weeks.
About 3 weeks before collection, we pulled the selenium salt and gave each buck about half a dose of BoSe, which is high potency selenium. We didn’t want to overdose them, so we kept it low.
The week before collection, we bred each buck at least 2-3 times over the course of the week. This is critical to success, as it cleans out all the old, degraded sperm cells.
Two days before collection, we isolated the boys into individual calf pen enclosures to keep them from ejaculating and allow the fresh semen to build up.
Prepping Does
On the doe side, we followed the sync protocol that Levi recommended, but it unfortunately didn’t work super well – NONE of our assigned does were in heat when we needed them to be. One finally did start up towards the end of the day, when we were about to give up! Talking to another breeder, it has apparently been the year for weird cycles – only one of her does was in heat, too. That horny little ND definitely saved the day!
Dropouts
We weren’t able to collect 3 of our intended bucks. It’s a bummer, especially because those 3 were some that we wanted most!
Treasured Florian was the first to be scratched from the list – he’s just too young and shy and had zero interest in any of the girls. He hasn’t been very humpy with the other boys yet, either.
Coyote Ledge Im a Heartbreaker was the next to go. He and his big stupid horns are an endless source of trouble! First, he broke out of the isolation pen. Next, he panicked after we loaded him into the trailer and started injuring the other guys – he almost broke our little cuddlebug Helios’ leg and very nearly poked his eye out. For the safety of all involved, we removed him. He’s so sweet, but we cannot handle the horns. He is for sale as a breeder, pet, or meat.
At collection, Treasured Helios was interested, but was too sad to try breeding any of the does. He sort of thought about it with the last one when she finally started flagging, but by then, it was too late to keep trying.
Success
It was freezing cold and took a million tries, but we successfully collected all the other bucks we had brought! We now have a supply of straws for our own use and VERY limited availability for sale. Levi doesn’t give out post-thaw motility numbers because he only keeps straws over 50%, but he said that we must have followed his prep directions because they collected really, really well.
If anyone is interested, feel free to reach out!
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