Sheep artificial insemination to improve lamb marketing in the Northeast

Farmers, interns, veterinarians and Cooperative Extension Educators learned about and experienced various aspects of sheep artificial insemination (AI) during the course of our four year grant.  We plan to continue working on our techniques and networking with other groups of producers and university professionals, interested in sheep AI, that we have discovered during this time.  As a result of the grant there is

• a laboratory set-up at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Learning Farm in Canton, NY, to continue experimenting in the field. 
• A set of AI Factsheets have been produced and shared through the SARE website.
• We have successfully produced lambs from both frozen semen delivered by laparoscopic AI (LAI) and fresh semen delivered by vaginal AI (VAI).  The rams produced have benefited several farmer cooperators.  The offspring of those rams have been disseminated to many farms in Northern New York as well.
• We mastered ram semen collection and ewe synchronization but still need more information and practice handling semen and performing different vaginal insemination techniques. 
• The area of semen extenders needs to be researched and practiced.  Our work led us to get in contact with a SARE funded group from Ohio (FNC13-901) is working on this problem and we will cooperate with and benefit from their work.  We also made lasting connection with experts from Canada and Maine who continue to be advisory sources bringing their experience and knowledge from France and Iceland.  Future grants will address bringing someone knowledgeable from one of those countries to the US to share their knowledge with us.

Two workshops were held in Canton, NY at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Learning Farm.  The first was a two day workshop on all types of sheep AI, ewe handling, semen handling. The workshop was held on September 20 and 21, 2013 at ELF with Glen Erickson of New Frontier Genetics instructing and Kirsten Anderson, DVM, monitoring the sheep. Fourteen farmers, 2 Extension Educators, and 4 veterinary technology students attended the workshop.

The second was specifically on how to extend and cool and re-warm semen (John E. Parks, Cornell University, instructing) and was held on January 14, 2015.  Ron Kuck (Extension Educator in Jefferson County), Betsy Hodge (PI and Extension in St. Lawrence County), Molly Parent (Intern from Vermont/SUNY Canton), and Brent Buchanan (Extension St. Lawrence County) attended. 

Producer adoption is low because it took longer for us to learn to do the procedure than expected and it is too complicated for most farms.  However, farmers interested in improvement of production traits are still interested in using AI to create better than average rams to use on their production flocks.  Getting farmers to agree on what is a better ram, how to measure that and then find the rams is part of the challenge.

The long term goal of the project, to improve lamb marketing in the Northeast through more uniformity and better quality lambs is a long way off.  The information we gained doing the activities in this grant is the first step of many to accomplish that goal.  In the future we must learn simple things like counting sperm and more difficult things like the best way to do progeny testing to provide rams worthy of using in an AI program.  The system is in place in European countries and we need to bring knowledgeable people from there to the United States to help us get it in place here.

Introduction:

The problem is that good quality, tested genetics are not available readily in the northeast.  Only one or two farms are currently using artificial insemination and testing/recording their sheep flock production.  Producers are forced to travel out of state and long distances to acquire rams with numbers behind them.  Many are using whatever rams they can find or keeping related rams longer than is desirable. 

Sheep AI is very challenging and the infrastructure does not exist like it does in the cattle industry.  Semen with tested production traits is not readily available.  Most of it comes from Europe, Australia or New Zealand with some available from Canada.  At the time we wrote the grant it was not legal to import semen from Europe, hopefully temporarily. There are other places and producers around the USA that are starting to collect semen but most producers are not set up to take advantage of it.

Producer knowledge of using AI is based on the cattle industry or does not exist at all.  Many farms in the producer group are commercial operations that strive to follow good management practices and make money.  They have expressed a strong interest in AI but there are few places to learn about it and practice it.  Veterinarians in the area are also not experienced in sheep AI and a veterinarian is required to do the laparoscopic AI (in New York State).

The solution to the problem is to educate the producers and demonstrate that sheep AI can be done on several farms around the region.  The hope is that by demonstrating it can be done other producers will become interested after seeing the results and want to try it, too.  We would also like to show the results of AI on growth and uniformity of marketed lambs. 

Currently there are a few farmers in the northeast that use AI about every other year to produce breeding stock to sell.  There is a cost involved that some producers find prohibitive.  Others, like the group that has been meeting regularly, want to make that investment to get the good breeding stock needed to improve their stock and increase their profits.

Eventually we hope, through this project to try the European model of fresh semen AI which is more accessible to more farmers and does not require a veterinarian on site.

Using fresh semen AI opens up the possibility of driving, for example, to Canada, collecting a ram and bringing the semen back, extending it and inserting it in synchronized ewes at home. A ram in another state could also be collected and the same procedure followed using overnight shipping. Producers could also go in together to purchase an expensive tested ram and share him through the use of fresh semen AI without any of the bio-security issues present when actually taking a ram from farm to farm.

During the grant we found a farmer/extension group from Ohio, led by Don and Anne Brown, that also had a SARE farmer grant to try fresh semen AI with sheep (FNC13-901) and we have kept up our communications with them.  We will cooperate with them on future projects.  We also connected with James Weber from the University of Maine who has experience with some of the methods used in Iceland.  Our goal is to share what we know.  A veterinarian from Quebec, Paul Cardyn, who has experience in LAI also helped us before our first workshop and gave us good advice.

The farmer cooperators were mostly commercial producers interested in improving the performance of their flock.  Harold Boomhower, Kris Cole, Pat and Beth Downing, Kendall and Monica Foote, Gene LaMothe, Chet Parsons, Isabel Richards, Carolyn Pierce (DVM) and Bryan Thompson.  Other extension educators were also involved in this project: Ron Kuck, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County.  Several interns: Molly Parent (SUNY Canton), Tristin Peterson (SUNY Morrisville), Conor McCabe (Cornell University). Two veterinarians: Carolyn Pierce, Kirsten Peterson

Our Instructors at our two workshops were Glen Erickson (New Frontier Genetics) and John E. Parks from Cornell University.