Artificial insemination of cows: arm in rectum - common?

November 1, 2018 4:28 PM

The method of artificially inseminating cows in which the technician inserts their non-dominant arm into a cow's rectum in order to locate and manipulate the cervix through the rectum wall: is this common practice? That is, is this done with every single cow requiring artificial insemination? Or is the process generally automated (i.e. not requiring a human arm inside a cow's rectum)?
posted by paleyellowwithorange to Pets & Animals (4 answers total)

My parents have a small hobby ranch with 10 registered cows, and my dad's arm is an integral part of artificial insemination. They keep a set of one-armed Carhartt coveralls for this purpose (and indeed any other time someone needs to put an arm in a cow). I am not sure how it would be done on a bigger/working ranch.
posted by esoterrica at 5:13 PM on November 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

That's how it was taught in the animal repro course I took at an Ag college ~6 or so years ago. We didn't do it with live cows (it was an undergrad class), but practiced in lab on some specimen uteruses and having the hand on top definitely helped. The tubes that are used to work their way up there are very flexible (for obvious reasons) and get stuck, plus you're going in blind. It's tricky, and why Artificial Insemination Technicians are a viable career in livestock country.
posted by Ufez Jones at 5:57 PM on November 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

My dad was a veterinarian, and I remember him doing it in the 70s.

I bike with an equine vet, and my understanding is that this is still a common practice.
posted by uberchet at 6:24 AM on November 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

As of about 10 years ago, which is when I was last acquainted with a person who inseminated cows for a large company, the answer was that the process is entirely manual.

(This person worked for a company most people between the Mississippi River and the Rockies south of Nebraska do at least some business with and has many herds of several thousand heads apiece)
posted by wierdo at 7:07 AM on November 2, 2018