Working with farmers in a sheep and beef practice makes you very aware how important it is that all cows get in calf and get in calf early. As we’ve said one of our more important jobs has been to pregnancy test cows and identify their pregnancy status. For most of our careers Pete J and I did this manually and this job would occupy most of our day-to-day work from February until May. By the end of this period we were relatively fit but in my case I was a little bit off balance. Manual pregnancy testing involved putting on waterproof leggings and top and inserting a gloved and lubricated hand to the elbow or beyond up the cow’s rectum. I mostly used my left arm for this and my right arm for holding the cow’s tail and steadying myself and the cow, so different muscles were used by each arm. Surprisingly my right elbow these days is the one that seems to have the worst arthritis. As you can imagine doing the job over 1000 times in a day could be reasonably demanding. These days ultrasound scanning has made the job much easier but not nearly as warming.
How well the job went depended on the facilities, how wild the cows were and how much dry feed they had been on. While the faeces of cows that had been on dry rank pasture were not unpleasantly runny they could impede passage up the rectum and require raking out. Forgetting to bring gloves and lubricant could also make the job a little more difficult and unpleasant — as happened more than once with me when flying. After about 200 cows there were not too many hairs remaining on my left arm.
The two most common reasons for cows not getting in calf is either they are in poor condition, which often occurs after a hard winter, or they have not been successfully mated. Pregnancy testing time was usually when the farmer first knew that he had a problem and it was then that he also knew he wasn’t going to be able to budget on a good return from his cows in a year’s time. Depending on what we were finding as we were working, we might be in the presence of either a very happy farmer whose happiness improved, or one whose demeanour steadily deteriorated as the job progressed. At times like these I sometimes felt that the farmer was ready to shoot the messenger and I didn’t enjoy having to mark each empty cow I found.
However, if the pregnancy rate was poor this was always a good opportunity to discuss with the farmer all the options and to start putting in place a plan to either find the cause or, if it was known, to implement management changes.
There are many reasons why a cow hasn’t successfully mated or doesn’t conceive. As a young vet I spent an inordinate amount of time when first faced with a problem farm looking for mineral and trace element deficiencies and certain diseases, but only occasionally found that one or other of these were contributing to poor in-calf rates. In the majority of cases the cause of poor reproductive performance in a beef herd was either that the mating cows were in very poor condition or that the bulls were not doing their job. So checking on the mating ability of bulls became an annual event on many farms, both to solve low pregnancy rates and to identify potential problems before they occurred.
We got into bull testing early on. While poor semen is often touted as a major cause of poor bull performance, in reality it is an insignificant reason. We did not waste too much time semen testing bulls as we were far more interested in wanting to know if the bulls were actually capable of doing their job, and we needed them to demonstrate to us that they could. This was carried out simply by restraining a quiet cow in a special stall or ‘cradle’ and watching the bulls mount her and achieve a successful mating. While smell is important for a bull to determine the time of oestrus in a cow, certain sights will also turn him on, just as with us men (PJ comment: PA is speaking for himself here!). All he needs is the rear view of a cow or the sight of another bull mating, or for that matter another cow riding a cow, to get him interested.
So we tested lots of run bulls — these being bulls of various ages on commercial farms. A herd of 200 cows might run six or seven bulls and we would test these fellows on an annual basis. Twenty to 30 per cent of bulls regularly failed the test. There were a number of reasons for failure including arthritis, penile defects and poor libido. In a study we carried out, just under 30 per cent of all bulls culled had become incapable because of arthritis, and most of these were not identified as having joint pain until they were put through the mating ability test. Trying to balance a couple of tonnes on one hind leg because the other one hurts means the mating procedure is very difficult and painful. Some bulls would not show any obvious signs of lameness until after an attempt or two at mating, observed while undergoing testing. It is easy to understand a bull’s loss of enthusiasm for the job when he knows sex is going to hurt like hell.
A similar percentage of all bulls culled had defects of or damage to the penis. Most of these had developed after working for a season or two. The bulk of these penis problems definitely could not be picked up until we put them through the test. Nor could bulls with low libido be identified until tested. Some bulls — in our study 7 per cent of previously untested bulls — just don’t want sex. Unfortunately because they never work they never wear out and invariably come in at the end of the season in great shape. On a number of occasions I have culled a bull because of low libido and the farmer has said, ‘But he’s my best bull.’ No doubt because he had always held his condition while the rest had done all the work.
It is all very well for a stud breeder to guarantee a bull and replace one that doesn’t perform, but lack of performance is usually not discovered until after the mating season and then you lose a whole year’s production from all the cows the bull doesn’t get in calf. As a result of our encouragement, and pressure from commercial beef breeders, our local stud farmers willingly got involved and had their young sale bulls tested. They appreciated that selling untested bulls was a bit like selling a new car without checking it had an engine, or at least one that started. A lack of libido is the most significant cause of underperformance by a two-year-old bull in his first season — so testing these bulls is important.
One stud farmer who was rather reluctant to submit his young sale bulls to the test was Alistair Elliot, a most likeable character with many interests besides his Angus stud. He eventually realised he had to do it and on the afternoon of the test had called in his neighbour Andy Peter to help. Andy now owns this stud — but that has nothing to do with this story. This farm, at the bottom end of the Awatere Valley, has its cattle yards, where we were doing the job, right beside the Awatere Valley Road. Alistair was not really that enthused about the whole process and to begin with neither were his bulls. An initial lack of enthusiasm does sometimes happen when testing virgin bulls for the first time but when one eventually gets the idea the rest, except those with a low libido, happily follow. Alistair was probably beginning to think that perhaps he had a lot of low-libido bulls or that this mating ability test, or serving capacity test, or libido test, or whatever you want to call it, was of no use and we were wasting his time.
In the middle of this period of low activity a car pulled up and a well-dressed man with a cheerful disposition got out, wandered over and as is usually the case on such unplanned meetings remarked immediately about the wonderful weather before introducing himself. If he had been at all observant he would have noticed that little was bright and sunny over this set of cattle yards. Alistair grunted and then asked what he wanted.
It turned out he was selling fire extinguishers and opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder with all the varieties of extinguisher and the great deals his company had on offer. It was a very inappropriate thing to do. Alistair saw more than red fire extinguishers and ripped into the poor fellow.
‘Can’t you see we are extremely busy? The last thing I need right now is a bloody fire extinguisher and the last thing I want to do right now is to put out any bloody fire of any bloody sort. Now get the hell out of it. Bugger off. Go away. Go. Go.’
By the end he was shouting and the fire extinguisher man rapidly retreated to his car and disappeared up the valley, no doubt hoping that the next farm he called at might be more welcoming.
Soon after this interlude the bulls started performing and the tension in the yards lifted. In no time we had done all 15 of them. All performed well except for one that had a persistent frenulum, a relatively rare event in a bull of this age. This is a band of tissue that extends from near the tip of the penis to the prepuce or sheath and prevents full extension of the penis. Normally this tissue breaks down at puberty. Alistair was delighted that I could fix it, which we did at the end of the day by simply snipping the tissue after tranquilising the bull.
The three of us sat down after all the work was finished, feeling at peace with the knowledge that it was a job well done with a good result.
‘I’m converted,’ said Alistair. ‘All the bulls worked and you fixed the one that didn’t.’
Andy and I had a good chuckle when Alistair then said, ‘Oh dear, that poor fire extinguisher man. I guess I was a bit tough on him. Knowing my luck my house will burn down tonight.’