EDUCATION & RESEARCH

Friends of the Canadian Charolais Foundation Breeders’ School

The second Friends of the Canadian Charolais Foundation Breeders’ School had rave reviews from the 60 plus breeders from across Canada who attended. Chairman of the Foundation Board, Kelly Howe, took charge of the event that was held near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

The day started with a tour of the newly built impressive BoviGen Genetic Centre located just northwest of Moose Jaw. This state-of-the-art custom semen collection and embryo transplant facility is tremendous. The international barn for export semen can house 32 bulls at one time as can the domestic collection pens with individual sheds.

Each of these, along with the on-farm collection area, have their own collection and lab set up as per CFIA regulations. The embryo barns can house up to 160 donor females where they do both conventional and in vitro flushing, freezing or implanting.

After the tour of BoviGen, we moved just down the road to Johnstone Auction Mart, where we had three excellent presentations and lunch.

Dr. Tyson Buyer, the owner of BoviGen was the first to present and gave a detailed overview of the cows estrous cycle and how it all works. The different hormones and how they interact and the different products to change the cycle and times of breeding were also explained.

Dr. Colin Palmer, from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, in Saskatoon, and a purebred Red Angus breeder, gave a great presentation on Optimizing Semen Testing for Your Bulls “The Breeding Soundness Exa m.” As a breeder, he brought his knowledge and experience in a grassroots fashion that was very informative and created a great question and answer session.

The final speaker of the day was Gary Brown, the Beef Sales Manager of Canada for Cargill Animal Nutrition. He talked about making sure you are feeding the right mineral mix and not doubling up if using more than one product as some minerals can block others if not in proper balance. Again, some good questions and answers were exchanged.

The very informative program that had some pertinent information was enjoyed by all who attended.