September 30th, 2010

My oh my, what a great day this was!! 

It actually started for me September 29th at 6:30 p.m. when I pulled out of the yard to travel to the Floyd's in Scottsbluff, NE for a goat flush they were holding.  Gloria had my donor doe already to go and I had prepared my recip does that I was hauling with me.  I pulled in their yard shortly after 10 that night.  7 hours later, I am awake waiting for the day to begin.  A couple hours later, others were awake and people started showing up for the big day.  Everyone was excited but yet nervous about what was going to be taking place (well, I should say that I was).  Gloria had Dr. John Crawford set up to do the flush from New Zealand and his assistant Maria.  As we all got to the barn, the orders started to come, instructions were given and people were taking on responsibilities that were necessary to make this a smooth process.   Some people have helped before, most of us were rookies.  But this wasn't a time to hold back, things had to be done.  It was time for the 1st donor to come in and to be prepared for surgery.  Maria went through and showed us what to do and then we assigned ourselves to the jobs at hand.  The 1st doe had 17 embryos, 14 that were useable.  2nd doe, 33 embryos with 28 good.  3rd doe, 21 but none of them were good.  The nerves set in for me since this doe was bred to the same buck mine was.  But you do have to realized that this doesn't work with every animal.  My doe was next, down she goes and on the cart to be prepped.  She is rolled over to the Doc and he does his stuff.  Gloria takes the dish to Maria to do her step and we are waiting to see what the out come is, not concerned at this point how many but if any of them are any good.  Maria yells out "Jack Pot, 22 good embryos'" (very appropriate since the name of the buck is Jack Pot).  What a moment of relief for many.  Gloria and Greg because their buck has good go go juice, me for so many embryos (even though I didn't do enough recips), Doc and Maria because that is part of how they figure their bill (lol).  We did 1 more donor and then started to do the implanting of the embryos.  This process doesn't take much time for the doc to do and everything needs to run smooth and quick.  The morning implanting ran a little rocky, but we made it through it.  After lunch (which was great), we done 2 more donor does and then done the implanting.  I am not sure what happened, but let me tell you we were rocking.  We had 2 carts going.  I was placing the cart with the doe in place for doc and making sure the doe was staying in place, people were putting goats on the carts, clipping and cleaning the recips keeping doc with a doe in front on him always,  people were taking does off the cart and getting the cart back up there just in time to get the next recip on it.  We completed the last recip at 5:30 p.m..  5 out of 6 does with good embryos, 114 embryos (average of 22.8 for the 5 donors) and 1 recip not used.  6 of the recip does were found to be not useable, so no embryos were put in those does.  Ok, you couldn't ask for a better day and you couldn't ask for more.  But it was better than that.  What a bunch of great people.  Everyone that showed up to help was amazing.  Not only did I have 11 recip does carrying 22 embryos in the trailer to come home with me, but what an awesome experience.    Doctor Crawford and Maria are first class people and very professional.  I would have liked to sit around longer to visit with them afterwards, but I needed to get the does home.  I pulled in at home shortly after mid-night, unloaded, feed the does and off to bed.  Now it is a waiting game to see who takes.