High-Tech Sex

 High tech sex in the bedroom…AHHH…Make that the barn. The University of Idaho Nancy M. Cummings Research, Extension and Education Center is doing some exciting research on cattle efficiency research that includes management of replacement heifers. Here’s Superintendent and researcher John Hall: “The research is primarily focused on beef reproduction, I do some work with sexed semen, (John, you can’t just slip by me with sexed semen and expect me to say Ahh-Huh…What in the world is that?) Well, the technology was developed by the USDA several years ago and they sort the semen into X bearing semen which will produce females or Y-bearing semen which produces males. There’s a little more DNA in an X-bearing sperm than a Y-bearing sperm and that technology is now about 90% accurate so that when we use a draw of sex semen, we’re using X-bearing semen because we’re trying to get heifers, then this year we produced 22 heifers out of 37 inseminations (So when somebody says No Bull! You can actually make that happen) Correct.”