Genus charging by the hour for inseminating cows

[AGN76]

Bloody hell bit of an eye-opener this thread.
I'm curreny paying £19.25 a service and straw on top. Paid by Direct debit each month. They have dropped off a lot of areas off the round in north Wales just keeping the RMS. Being almost last on the round the Tec can be here anywhere between 10am and 2.30 pm depending on the time of year and how many calls there are. Genus are the only ones that call out in the sticks up here, although a few have left and are starting up as independents. With only 50 odd cows I wouldn't get enough practice to justify DIY. So other than buying a bull there's not many options

Your Genus tech doesn't live far from you, can't you get him there at 6am?

 

[jimmer]

World wide sires / AB cow support
£7 blue straw
£7 to put it in
200 cows 6 weeks AI
We put cows in pen and help line them up, they will glove dubious bullers and serve if necessary

 

[Ducati899]

Bloody hell bit of an eye-opener this thread.
I'm curreny paying £19.25 a service and straw on top. Paid by Direct debit each month. They have dropped off a lot of areas off the round in north Wales just keeping the RMS. Being almost last on the round the Tec can be here anywhere between 10am and 2.30 pm depending on the time of year and how many calls there are. Genus are the only ones that call out in the sticks up here, although a few have left and are starting up as independents. With only 50 odd cows I wouldn't get enough practice to justify DIY. So other than buying a bull there's not many options

I recently got my OH to do a AI course with the vets,she’s not doing huge numbers but so far she’s getting good results,nice to have the option of serving the odd one of a evening

 

[PI Stsker]

I recently got my OH to do a AI course with the vets,she’s not doing huge numbers but so far she’s getting good results,nice to have the option of serving the odd one of a evening.

Found much better results not spraying and praying like genus used to do years ago.
Can also go In vaginally and see if she’s been missed and bled off where as genus wouldn’t do that and waste a straw.
DIY, you get out what you put in. If you pay attention to pedometer / chalks and back that up with visual bulling activity you have much better results compared to genus turning up and relying solely on pedometer/chalk.

 

[Enry]

It is frustrating that I have been paying a similar "arm fee" as a block calver to the AYR farms.

They turn up here and serve maybe 5 to 10, for 10 weeks, versus 1 or 2 over 10 months.

We'll see if I'm in for a discount...

Flip side is that you need the service for a set period of time and then you don't, the ayr herds provide a steady workload and income

 

[Coobreeder]

But you’re paying best part of a grand to serve your cows per year, assuming 100% conception rate! (Plus semen)
Id say you were a prime candidate to do DIY. Get on a course at the vets the only way to learn is do it. There’s hella lot of money there to pay for extra semen to serve them several times over until your eye is in.
My brother employs a marvellous self employed chap that does allot of milking and near enough all the serving. When he has his 2 week annual holiday there is a remarkable drop in services and an even bigger drop in fertility, this is covered by a genus chap on an adhoc basis.
We can only put it down to the chap being on site all day so can serve them when the time is right and watch them rather than relying on chalk/pedometers only and rather than rushing to get to the next place.

He’s been known to do 2/3 after the morning milking and a couple more after evening milking as he wasn’t quite sure she was at ‘peak’ in the morning.

So he's double serving 66% of some services ?

 

[Coobreeder]

The margin on a straw is tiny , just think how much people were paying for semen 30 years ago and it not changed much. One of my selling points is im not fussed who supplies the straw (at least ten good competing suppliers ) as long as its fertile , so as a result i think i cover more farms , as my customers like their own options and not to feel tied to one company , so they very often get the best deals .

I can remember £30/40 for a conventional straw not even 20 years ago.

 

[PI Stsker]

So he's double serving 66% of some services ?

Not double serving. Say they heat detect 5 cows he might serve 3 in the morning and 2 at night depending on pedometer data and visual signs to try catch them at peak rather than just spraying it in at 10 am every day

 

[Scholsey]

Availability/reliability/affordability of AI techs and robot/parlour techs have got to be a huge risk to the dairy industry going forward

 

[Married 2 The Mob]

Bloody hell bit of an eye-opener this thread.
I'm curreny paying £19.25 a service and straw on top. Paid by Direct debit each month. They have dropped off a lot of areas off the round in north Wales just keeping the RMS. Being almost last on the round the Tec can be here anywhere between 10am and 2.30 pm depending on the time of year and how many calls there are. Genus are the only ones that call out in the sticks up here, although a few have left and are starting up as independents. With only 50 odd cows I wouldn't get enough practice to justify DIY. So other than buying a bull there's not many options

I used to think just like you, that 50-60 cows was not sufficient to get good enough on DIY.
That was until I got so hacked off with Genus costs and the revolving door of flaky techs we had in our area.
I wasn't the best on the insemination course I did, but once you get home and practicing, one quickly improves. That and the benefits of better timing and I soon had better figures than I had with Genus. Was quite comfortable using expensive sexed semen by the time I packed up.

Did I mention, my flask and kit is on eBay?
Don't live too far from you now, would happily chuck in delivery to a scenic place

 

[PI Stsker]

Availability/reliability/affordability of AI techs and robot/parlour techs have got to be a huge risk to the dairy industry going forward

That’s exactly why we did all our serving in house and the a guy we used to have who did all our on farm bodging, until he retired, used to hold hands with any dairy tech that on farm so at 4am when something don’t work and the tech is 4 hours away we could sort it out and make something work. In the end he knew more than they did…

Auto ID, back flush, ACR, auto backing gates etc are all good until the wires get chewed in the night by Roland, what would of been a 4 hour wait for a tech and some agitated cows turns in to 35 min fix.

 

[JES]

Availability/reliability/affordability of AI techs and robot/parlour techs have got to be a huge risk to the dairy industry going forward

Should have written “Availability/ reliability/ affordability of anyone supporting dairy farmers is a huge risk going forward as we lose critical mass”

 

[TheRanger]

Had a letter in the post today. More than doubled in price. Thankfully we went all DIY when we did.

 

[Holsteinfriesian90]

Had a letter in the post today. More than doubled in price. Thankfully we went all DIY when we did.

View attachment 1144734

Anyone would think it’s April fools day.

 

[lady muck]

Had a letter in the post today. More than doubled in price. Thankfully we went all DIY when we did.

View attachment 1144734

Is that Genus?

 

[serf]

Had a letter in the post today. More than doubled in price. Thankfully we went all DIY when we did.

View attachment 1144734

Had same letter but a higher price ...
Shall be looking else where now for the odd few that we do ,

There letter wrote along the lines of we can't do the job at the old price cos not enough customers!

Well there going to have a lot less after sending these letters out ....
I can see them folding it all together ppl will sort alternate arrangements out !

 

[DairyNerd]

@TheRanger got the same letter, got them to do 3 heifers this year, won't have any to do now, all DIY or bull. Complete joke, daylight robbery.

 

[TheRanger]

@TheRanger got the same letter, got them to do 3 heifers this year, won't have any to do now, all DIY or bull. Complete joke, daylight robbery.

Have done the odd insemination for a neighbour at £20 inc semen, might need to up my prices!!

 

[serf]

@TheRanger got the same letter, got them to do 3 heifers this year, won't have any to do now, all DIY or bull. Complete joke, daylight robbery.

They have feked them selves big time , think this is their "Ratner moment " ....

 

[dinderleat]

We normally get genus into cover myself when I’m away, but spoke to my neighbour and we’re going to cover each other £50 a service is ridiculous.