Christensen Genetics

Seth Christiansen of Christianson Genetics of Westin, Idaho, explained to me why winter is busier than summer for his operation. Today, our work centers on embryo transfer, and during the winter specifically would be when we do most of that. So during the summer, it's relatively empty Here. The cattle are out grazing during the normal growing season. That would be when they're out on pasture as opposed to being here in the dry lot through that whole winter feeding period. This would be the time when on a normal farm they wouldn't be doing nearly as much just because it's not the growing season. But while everything's frozen, that would be when we are synchronizing the cows, giving them a series of injections to bring them in to heat at the same time, and then doing embryo transfer on those cattle. So pulling embryos out of their very best 5% of the herd and transferring those embryos into the other 95% of the herd, there's about 400 animals total here. Only 20 of those are actually the mothers to the upcoming calf crop. They produce the embryos that are carried by the other cows. And as we implant all those embryos through the winter, the cows that conceive early, so conceive in that December, January time frame to carry one of those embryo transfer pregnancies, We'll keep those as part of the herd and we'll calve those cattle and raise those embryo transfer calves, the cows that conceive later on in the cycle. It's late for us, but it's right on time for most everybody else. If they conceive in March or April, they're going to have a January or February calf, which is when most seed stock operations prefer to calve by bringing in these cattle, doing all this extra work through the winter, we're able to add a lot of value to these animals. The average animal is going to come in to the program as an open female worth 1002 to $500 once we've done all of our winners were and added those embryos to those cows, confirmed those pregnancies through the winter, the average female there is going to be worth between$5000 and $6000.