AI

I have been looking forward to the actual "AI" procedure all summer long, but when the time came, I had to watch the kiddos.......bummer. I wanted to witness this, but Cody, the wonderful husband that he is, felt my pain and took a lot of pics and actual video footage of the procedure! Pretty cool! The first time the vet came out, a month ago, we put the SDR's in, she was a little short with us and acted like we better keep up with her. Turns out she was very impressed with how smooth our operation went. Then a couple of weeks ago only me, Cody, Luis and Kim worked the deer at 1:00 a.m to pull out the SDR's and give them a shot and that went way smooth as well. Cody said when the vet lady got here for the actual procedure that she said, "well, ya'll just try and keep up!" and of course Cody said, "Oh, we will keep up!" and they did! The vet was impressed again!

Since we were AIing laproscopically (sp) the vet performed surgey on the deer right there! That is what I wanted to see :( They first ran the deer through the shoot, gave them a shot to knock them out and sent them in a room to "pass out." After they were out, they loaded them on a surgery type table specifically for this procedure, then the vet went to town. They would do 3 doe at a time.

Then they would shave the area.....

The vet made 2 small cuts. One for a camera to see where she was putting the straws of semen and one to put the semen in. Then she would just glue the skin back together since the cuts were really small.

Then they would unload the deer in the alley way, wait 45 minutes to give them the reversal and then they would wake up and walk straight back to their pen, like they knew where they were going! Poor babies were still drunk on the walk home :(

Also, before the vet left we wanted straws of semen from one of our big breeder bucks. Cody tranquilized him (we have this on tape and it is hilarious! The buck would not cooperate at first and Cody was getting frustrated and the guy video taping will crack anybody up.) Then everybody wanted a picture with the big buck!

Also, look again at the picture above: The lady holding the baby is the vet, she had that baby on her back the whole time in a baby sling. We did 2 different pens of doe, and when they had to take a break to herd in the second pen, she took a break and fed her, lol. That would have been a sight in itself to see! Talk about mother/daughter bonding! I think her baby is in training to be a vet!