SEEDSTOCK COUNCIL MEETING
2003 Cattle Industry Annual Convention & Trade Show – Nashville, Tennessee
Thursday, January 30, 2003

Sponsored by: American Livestock/Harding and Harding Insurance Company

Cost Analysis of Synchronization/AI
Willie Altenburg and Roy Wallace, National Association of Animal Breeders
Audio File

You will need Windows Media Player to listen to audio archives of the presentations.
Click here to download a free version.

AI Companies Offer Synchronization Cost-Analysis Tools

While elite purebred breeders use artificial insemination (AI) and synchronization extensively, the overall percentage of the 930,000 cattlemen in North America who utilize AI in their herds is relatively small. To tap the next tier in the market, says Willie Altenburg, Genex, the AI industry needs to show an economic benefit to using AI to the 150,000 "purebred reproducer herds" and the "progressive commercial producers."

Altenburg and Select Sire’s Roy Wallace represented the National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB) during the Seedstock Council Meeting Thursday morning, Jan. 30, at the 2003 Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show. The session was sponsored by American Live Stock Insurance Co.

Altenburg provided an overview of an Excel spreadsheet Genex has developed to allow technicians to sit down at a producer’s table and compare the costs of AI to bull costs. The program allows producers to vary the cost of the bull used for comparison and to choose A.I and synchronization protocols. Producers can input purchase price, salvage value, feed and medical costs, number of cows, expected lifetime, etc. It also allows the user to estimate conception rates, labor costs, and costs for semen and synchronization products associated with AI.
WWallace says he takes a different approach to explaining the value of a synchronization/AI program. The biggest advantage, he explains, is in getting more calves born the first week of the breeding season. Colorado State University, he says, has indicated that a synchronization program will improve the average age of a calf crop by 13 days

With a synchronization program, Wallace says, calves are older and more uniform; commercial producers have more weight to sell; and seedstock producers have older bulls to market. In addition, cows calving earlier in the season have a better chance of rebreeding the subsequent year.
When considering whether to use synchronization and AI, says Wallace, "the power is in the age of the calf."

-- by Shauna Rose Hermel