Old Dogs New Tricks

by Peter Anderson

  For me, the world changed about then. After a bit of a nudge from John Peter, a local farmer and Corriedale breeder, I made contact with a semen freezing and insemination centre in Albury Wodonga, on the New South Wales–Victoria border. I rang Neil Holt, the principal. Yes, he would train me, and a friend, for a not inconsiderable sum of money I might add.

  I contacted my old university mate Richard Lee, a vet in Waipukurau. Would he like to learn to inseminate sheep with frozen semen? You bet he would. So in January 1986, Rick and I went to Albury. We had a fascinating week in the Riverina, spending days on large sheep stations learning to use the laparoscope, and more days in the clinic in Albury, collecting and freezing sheep semen.

  There was a lot to learn in both disciplines. The laparoscope takes a while to get the hang of, co-ordinating hand and a refracted eye, at a distance of about 30 centimetres. The inseminating catheters they used were made from hollow glass tubing. They had to be made each night, prior to inseminating, over a Bunsen burner, drawing the melting tip out once, then again to a fine sharp point. It was laborious and exacting and by the time you’d made 200 or more it was bedtime. And the tips were very delicate. It was easy to break one off inside the ewe if she struggled in the cradle, or if you had to shift some inner fat to find the uterus. The joke was always that that lamb would be born with a glass eye, but it wasn’t really funny at all. A piece of sharp glass inside a mammalian body can be very dangerous.

  Freezing the semen was done by using an artificial vagina (AV), filled with warm water at body heat. A teaser ewe, brought to an artificial oestrous with oestrogen, was held in a cradle, rear end out. The collector knelt beside her, and the ram would approach, sometimes boldly, sometimes timidly, especially with a human so close.

  When he mounted the ewe, you had to deftly deflect his penis with one hand and direct it into the AV, held in the other. If he was satisfied with that he would thrust and ejaculate immediately into the collecting vessel at the end of the AV. We would then quickly evaluate a drop of the semen under the microscope, estimate the sperm count, dilute it with egg yolk and store it in a warm water bath for the next step, chilling in a refrigerator. Then we froze it in a two-step process, first making pellets drop by drop onto a block of dry ice (carbon dioxide), then quickly tipping the pellets into liquid nitrogen for permanent storage.

  The next few years meant pretty hectic autumns for me as the merino breeders, and those farming other breeds, took up the technology. It was a major change in our practice and it meant we eventually had to expand and hire another vet.

  There was a lot to learn. I had to get familiar and competent with a difficult new technique. The fine hand-eye co-ordination required, and hours of concentration peering down a laparoscope literally gave me splitting headaches, particularly in the first year when I was aware of the importance of the outcome to the farmer and was finding the technique demanding.

  Later I was a lot more relaxed as I became reasonably good at it. We also found some better catheters made of plastic with a fine needle tip, which could be sterilised and reused. Even better, they didn’t break inside the ewe. This was a huge improvement.

  We also had to learn about the vagaries of international shipping of hazardous goods; the semen is transported in special tanks containing liquid nitrogen, which at -270 degrees Centigrade can do a lot of harm if it gets loose. The bureaucracy around international freight was another large barrier, and there seemed to be little consistency between shipments. Many arrived only in the nick of time, and on one occasion at Blenheim Airport I almost had to physically threaten a deficient official at 7 a.m. I could see the tank through a doorway, but he told me opening time was 8 a.m. Meanwhile the ewes were ready and waiting an hour’s drive away. I got the semen.

  Preparing the ewes for artificial insemination (AI) was a serious, even critical part of the process. The farmer would select his ewes carefully for the genetics he wanted to enhance with a particular ram. They needed to be on a rising plane of nutrition so they would ovulate well, and then had to have their reproductive cycles synchronised so they all came in heat together, within a 24-hour period. Frozen semen has a pretty short life after thawing, as little as twelve hours, so catching the fertile eggs at the correct time is vital.

  The ewes were synchronised with progesterone-impregnated sponges which were placed in their vaginas for 12 days then removed. At the same time as removal, they received an injection of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) to increase the number of fertile eggs they would release. This improved the chances of one or more being fertilised.

  So it all meant a lot of organisation, and the day of insemination was pre-ordained, weeks in advance.

  I loved the whole process. It raised our precision standards, and got us very organised, but the contact with farmers was the great pleasure. They’re good people, sheep farmers, and the merino breeders were, mostly, my friends, and still are. Spending a day in a woolshed with them while I worked intensively, and they brought the ewes to me one by one, was very satisfying.

  The AI developments also led to a lot of similar work with red deer and wapiti, and with cashmere goats. Our veterinary world had expanded, very positively. Those years were the best of my professional life.

  I took an assistant with me on the AI trips. Her job (I say ‘her’ because all the assistants happened to be women) was to thaw the semen, load the pipettes with the required dose, and direct them, one at a time, through the cannula into the ewe’s abdomen. Peering through the laparoscope, I would then take over and deliver the semen into each horn of the uterus in turn.

  The industry developed, and semen began to come in straws, not pellets. This required a different thawing regime. Bronwen Leonard was a very funny Glaswegian, whose husband Peter Orpin worked for us as a locum (see ‘Beastly’, page 223). Bronwen became my assistant for one season in the late 1980s. ‘Blow, don’t suck,’ she would say sweetly as she thawed the straws into a glass tube, then giggled.

  Sally Peter, another of my assistants for a season, was deeply concerned for the ewes, which had to be suspended upside down in front of me for the insemination. Some were clearly uncomfortable and would kick a bit, making my precision implanting very difficult.

  Sally’s solution was to take the stud book provided by the Australian company which supplied the ram and open it at the page with the photo of the ram we were using. She would place the open book upside down in front of the ewe’s face, so she (the ewe) could see who she was being mated with. Sally claimed that the ewes were much more settled when she did this, and at least she (Sally) was happier.

  Most of the young women who assisted me felt like that. They were empathetic and caring towards the animals, just as I was. I routinely used local anaesthetic on the puncture site of each ewe, and was very conscious that upside down, even though their bellies were empty after 24 hours in the yards, they could be profoundly uncomfortable. So the less time to perform the procedure the better.

  The assistant’s role was vital. It required the precision and gentle touch which women seem to inherently possess. The trouble was the assistants were all young and mostly married, and they all became pregnant in the same year as the sheep. I reckoned it was the pheromones from the AI job, but they didn’t all agree. The upshot was that most seasons I had to train another assistant. Consequently there were often mistakes at the beginning of the season.

  Jenny Jones, a hospital nurse, helped me with one of the early AI mobs at Richmond Brook, one of Marlborough’s oldest and best-known properties.

  John Macer, the manager, had befriended the owners of Collinsville, a very large South Australian stud, and imported semen from them. It was the first time we’d inseminated at Richmond Brook, and the semen was very expensive, around $300 per pellet, which in 1986 was a lot of money. Every pellet was precious.

  The day started well and by lunchtime I think we’d inseminated about 75 ewes, reasonable going at 25 per hour. I was being extra careful, and watching Jenny c
losely on her first day. She was quickly into the swing of it, neat and competent.

  At lunchtime John was feeling pretty good, and probably relieved. ‘Yvonne’s got lunch at the house,’ he said. Yvonne Richmond was a lovely person, thoughtful and interested, and she did indeed have a good lunch prepared.

  The problem was Macer. He insisted on pulling out a cask of wine, and plying us all over lunch. Jenny had two glasses and I admit I felt a warm glow as we began again after the break.

  Then, disaster.

  ‘Oh hell,’ wailed Jenny.

  The first three pellets she’d pulled out of the nitrogen tank had slipped from her forceps, and dropped into the water bath as she tried to place them in the test tube. They were gone, no going back, $900 worth. There was a stunned silence, and poor Jenny felt terrible, but it was John’s own fault, and he graciously admitted it, albeit through slightly gritted teeth.

  But Jenny didn’t ever offer to do the job again.

  FOOTNOTE

  The New Zealand merino industry made terrific strides in the following 20 years as farmers came to understand that better feeding of young stock meant a more productive ewe and would not affect the fineness of the wool. Coupled with new genetics as a result of AI, better feeding saw wool weights and lambing percentages increase significantly — just as many in the veterinary industry had predicted. It’s fair to say that in the past, many farmers believed the solution to getting good fine wool was to keep feeding levels down.

  That was a myth, and it also contributed to some pretty poor reproductive results. Lambing percentages in the 50s were not uncommon, and few achieved 100 per cent in those days. They do now, and Pete and I think we played a small part in this, both in our advocacy of growing bigger two-tooths and in our technical ability in AI. Does the industry see it that way? I hope so.

  TRUCKING LIONS — PA

  In the early 1980s a wildlife park was built near Renwick, a small town a few kilometres west of Blenheim. This was modelled very much along the lines of Orana Park in Christchurch. One of the principal initiators of the park was Murray Roberts who had been involved in the development of Orana Park and he became the first director of the Marlborough Zoological Park. After much fundraising and voluntary time spent building paddocks and shelters and enclosures, the animals had to be bought and collected.

  I was involved with the development of the park and also the collection of some of the animals, a number of which came from Orana Park. We had bought two surplus lions, a tiger and a couple of water buffalo from Orana Park and they needed transporting up to Blenheim. The plan was to borrow a truck and go fetch them. The owner of the local wool store had kindly offered us an old truck they used for collecting wool from around the district. One Saturday I joined Mike McNulty, a member of the park’s development committee who had a lot of experience driving trucks, and after a few issues getting the thing started we headed south.

  Belching huge volumes of blue smoke, we headed up the Dashwood Pass, 10 kilometres south of Blenheim and arguably the worst stretch of State Highway One between Kaitaia and Bluff. At the top of the pass we came to the conclusion that this was going to be a painfully slow trip and from the smell and noise coming from the engine we were a little doubtful about getting to Christchurch and back, a round trip of around 600 kilometres. Being broken down on the side of the road with a tiger and two lions on the back would definitely have created a few issues, especially if it took some time for repairs to be carried out — that is if anyone was prepared to do repairs once they knew what we were transporting.

  So we wisely returned to Blenheim. Luckily a good friend Murray Rose had kindly offered us his truck if we couldn’t find another one, so after returning the first truck I phoned Murray whose immediate response was: ‘Sure, and I’ll come too. There’s not much on this weekend and it should be good for a laugh.’

  ‘Oh by the way I am out of miles and we can’t get any more now,’ he added. In those days a special licence was required to shift anything further than 50 miles by road. Trucks had a hubometer stuck to the wheels and miles had to be bought in advance.

  ‘But I’m prepared to risk it,’ he finished.

  This was extremely generous of Murray because if we got caught he would be fined on several fronts: transporting on a Sunday, not having paid for miles, and not having a carrier licence and, I believe, transporting out of his area. Let’s hope we didn’t see any cops, or more importantly no cops saw us.

  The three of us made it without any problems to Christchurch where we stayed the night before heading to Orana Park early on Sunday morning. Here we caught up with Murray Roberts and Orana Park’s head keeper. There was a bit to do before we could load the animals — one was to vasectomise the male lion. Marlborough’s park was only able to have a pair of lions as long as they didn’t breed so we needed to see to the male.

  That morning I could claim I had shot a tiger and two lions; something hunters pay a fortune to do these days. While I didn’t have any trophies to mount on the wall, not that I would want them, I did have the satisfaction of seeing them quietly lying down and going to sleep after I had darted them. The tiger and lioness were gently placed into separate crates on the truck and given antidotes after which I vasectomised the lion, an interesting but relatively simple little surgical operation. I made sure I placed dissolving cat-gut sutures in his scrotum as I didn’t fancy removing any sutures from any lion’s scrotum in 10 days’ time.

  The buffaloes were reluctant travellers and it took some time to convince them that they should go up the ramp into their crates and join three serious predators on the back of the truck. We eventually succeeded and then made sure our precious cargo was safely strapped onto the deck. The load was covered with tarpaulins generously lent by New Zealand Railways.

  Early in the afternoon we started for home. If all went well it was going to be at least a five hour trip. All did go well until just beyond Amberley, a town 35 kilometres north of Christchurch. The inevitable, and what we had hoped wouldn’t happen, did happen. Mike noticed flashing red and blue lights in the rear vision mirror and pulled over. Bugger.

  ‘You’re a bit out of your territory. Where do you think you are going?’ asked the traffic officer.

  ‘Blenheim,’ says Mike.

  ‘And what are you carrying?’

  ‘Lions and tigers,’ says Murray.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ The cop wasn’t impressed by what he thought was a very facetious reply.

  By now I had had time to go around to the back of the truck and get between the cop and the hubometer. He turned and started moving towards me.

  I lifted the bottom edge of the tarpaulin alongside the head of one of the large carnivores and told him to have a look. While the roar that came out of the small gap he was looking through startled me it must have given the traffic officer a mind-blowing fright. He staggered back, his ticket book flying in the air and, other than a very unprofessional expletive, was speechless for a moment.

  When he had regained his composure he said, ‘Well boys — you had better be on your way. You’ve a long way to go. Drive carefully. Go.’

  All thoughts of checking a hubometer well out of his mind.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful. Word must have gone up the line because on the way we were acknowledged and smiled at and waved to by at least two other traffic cops. He was a good cop.

  EMBARRASSMENT AT THE BORDER — PJ

  Fathering a lot of sheep was a very serious and important job, but it did have plenty of lighter moments. One of those came after my trip to Australia learning to freeze semen and to use the laparoscope to inseminate.

  Rick Lee, my mate from Waipukurau, and I had about 10 days at Albury Wodonga, mostly apart, as Rick went off to the Riverina with one of the vets for on-farm inseminating, and I stayed at the centre learning to collect and freeze. Then we changed roles, and I had a wonderful three days near Jerilderie on one of the large polled merino studs. It was hard work, and while I was mostly
the vet’s assistant, I learned I had to concentrate very hard. It taught me to do the job for which I later had to train several assistants so the time spent was invaluable. It meant that I understood the job I was asking my assistant to do.

  Every 15 or 20 ewes, Neil Holt, the principal of the facility, would say, ‘Your turn to do the next three’ and under his watchful eye, and the anxious scrutiny of the farmer, I would struggle my way through, handling the very fragile glass catheters that they used then to inseminate. I found the few I did each day to be really hard work. Back in Marlborough it took me a whole season before I felt really capable, and I could relax a little bit more as I did the job each autumn. But for several years, most nights I would come home with a headache, after six or eight hours peering hard down the ’scope.

  When our time at Albury was finished, Rick and I bought some gear from the Holts. We didn’t have artificial sheep vaginas at our practices in New Zealand, so we bought a couple each of those, and several of the latex liners and the glass collection vials that went with them. We embarked on a roadtrip back to Sydney, staying with a family friend in the Blue Mountains. A radiologist with a string of practices in NSW, David Badham was a delightful character, and his wife Bette a gracious and thoughtful host.

  Dave put us on motorbikes to tour his rough bush farm, filled us full of beer and wine and let us know his thoughts on royalty in a very Australian way. When we learned it was Australia Day we started to sing ‘God Save the Queen’. Dave leaped to his feet.

  ‘Fuck the Bloody Queen!’ he shouted, and stumped off to bed. (For years after whenever Rick was writing to me [before emails and the internet], he would put somewhere on the envelope, FTBQ, a reminder of that funny night.)