POSTING #149

A CHANGE OF PACE

The last few postings have been about the War of 1812.

I am sure there are many readers who have had quite enough of stories about the War--- at least for the moment---so I thought I would tell some stories about a totally unrelated subject.

Artificial insemination.

How much more unrelated can one get!

I am not entirely sure why I feel like writing about artificial insemination (AI) but I suspect that the many recent articles in the press about fertility treatments are to blame.

Anyway, here goes….


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Freedom of Choice

In the fall of 1959 I was in BC’s Fraser Valley visiting an Artificial Insemination centre with a small group of other Immigration Foreign Service Officers.

Sitting in a conference room, the manager explained that it was a prosperous business, sending semen from high quality, pure bred bulls all over the world. He described the type of employees they had and then talked about the sort of immigrant workers they would be interested in recruiting.

We then accompanied him to a barn where the semen was collected. As we walked along a centre passageway, he explained that the donor bulls would be brought in along the same passageway. When the bull got to the end of the passageway it would sniff the air and look to the stall on the right and to the one on the left, in both of which an animal had been tethered.

Once the bull had made a decision about which animal it would like to mount, it would strut over to the stall and prepare for action. At this point a technician would slip a heated and lubricated rubber sleeve over the bull’s member. After some thrusts, a quantity of semen would be shot into the sleeve. The semen would then be diluted with distilled water, divided into samples and frozen.

That seemed clear enough and we prepared to leave the barn.

The manager stopped us by saying that there was a sidelight on the collection of semen that might be of interest to us.

He said that before bringing a bull down the passageway, their custom was to put a cow ‘in heat’ in the stall on the right, and a bull in the stall on the left.

He said that visitors were always puzzled about why a bull would choose to mount another bull.

 But some bulls just did.

In the end, as he said it didn’t matter to him whether the bull headed left or right, the centre was still going to get its semen in the rubber sleeve.

“And”, he added with a smile, “We are a democracy after all”.


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The Turkey Trot

In the 1970s I was on a training course with a number of public servants including Albert (not his real name) who was a research biologist with Agriculture Canada, and a very serious fellow. One evening Albert and I and a couple of others went to a busy bar for a beer.

Albert said that the bar reminded him of one he had visited in Washington when he was attending an international conference of research biologists. Four or five of the biologists escaped to the bar after a day of papers and presentations.

Albert then launched into a story.

“After we got our beer and had chit-chatted a bit about the conference, I started to tell them about the work I had been doing in artificial insemination with turkeys. AI with turkeys was new at that time and the other biologists were interested in what Canada was doing.

“I told them how we ran an experiment. We brought a group of tom turkeys into a room and lined them up---as long as there are no female turkeys around tom turkeys are pretty docile. Then we would take the first turkey, massage its member and catch the semen in a test tube. Then on to the next in line.

“Things went well until we discovered that some of the toms that had been ‘done’ were going to the back of the line, ready to be done again. We finally had to paint a mark on the toms that had been done.

“It was at that point that I realized that all the conversation in the bar had stopped. Everyone was looking at me and listening.

“It was really strange”, Albert finished.

I started to laugh---thinking he was being ironic---but when I looked at Albert I realized that he really didn’t understand why a serious discussion of an experiment testing artificial insemination in turkeys would be a conversation stopper in a Washington bar.

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Before Artificial Insemination


This is a story that my father relished telling--- within the family---about a scandal in the Ontario Government sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which party was in power during this scandal but since my dad was a closet Conservative---as a member of Ontario Provincial Police he had of course to keep his political views to himself--- I am pretty sure the scandal happened during a Liberal regime or perhaps during the time the United Farmers of Ontario Party was in power (1919-1923). I don’t think dad would have joked about a Conservative scandal.

I am hoping that a reader with an historical bent will be able to tell me when the scandal happened.

Anyway, the government of the day decided that it should help improve the quality of dairy herds in Ontario. Since this was before the time of artificial insemination, it meant bringing in a bull from a fine overseas herd. The plan was to send a team of experts to Britain to find a really good young bull that could be brought to Ontario and used to sire high quality calves.

According to the story, the experts found such a bull in Scotland. It had a most impressive pedigree and was a superb looking animal. The Scots said they were reluctant to sell the bull but were finally persuaded to part with it in return for a goodly sum of money.

The team accompanied the bull back to Ontario and proudly presented it to a farmers’ organization. The farmers all agreed that it was a fine looking bull, and there was some friendly competition about which one would be the first to have a cow serviced by the new bull.

The bull was carted from farm to farm to do his duty, which he did with commendable aplomb.

And then the farmers waited.

And waited.

Weeks passed and it became clear that although he was a fine looking bull he was, as they say, shooting blanks.

And then the Official Opposition bombarded the government with taunts about having been gulled by canny Scots who had sold the Ontario Government a sterile bull.

‘Successful’ scandals are always those that the public can understand. Ontario was still very much an agricultural economy in the 1920s and 1930s and everyone could understand about a bull that had been purchased at great cost, but just couldn't produce.


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Note:

A new Letter from Virgil Posting will hopefully appear during the next couple of weeks.

Posting #10 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog was uploaded on August 6, 2012. In it the Guru expands on the reasons why Obama may win in a landslide. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/