We approach this subject from two perspectives.
First, the perspective of the AI technician- as a cervical AI team, our goal is to get the semen into the right place at the right time. With that being said, there are alot of factors we can not control. From the condition of the does, to the adhereance to the hourly schedule, the stress on the does, and the quality of the semen. All these factors can and will effect the conception rate. Imagine trying to get 30 women to all cycle within a 4 hour period ( in more interesting is , make all the women live in the same house during that time period). Now, lets consider a typical doe herd that are being prepped for AI. Any farmer may have doe lines from different geographical areas, e.g. a farmer in Indiana may have does from Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio etc...all these different lines tend to have their own natural cycle times. Some does may naturally breed in late october, others in early November and still others in late November. Also, let's throw in a handful of yearling does, some born as late as July. As you can see , we are trying to force all these does to cycle at our request and ovulate and conceive in the same small time frame. This is a recipe for failure! The facts are that with proper technique and husbandry , the deer industry has been able to successfully artificially inseminate does at a 50% or better conception rate, this is truly impressive. With the success from previous years we come to expect higher percentages because we hear of people talking about their success rate being 80% or better. So we get disappointed when we successfully get 50% because we hear others getting 80%. What you are not hearing is that those people bragging about high success rates may actually have skewed their data to acquire the high percentage e.g, any doe that does not look right, the straw does not look right, is a yearling, did not take last two years are thrown out of the over all number of does that were AI'd. It is as if, when we do not get a high percentage ( over 60%) then we as deerfarmers feel that we have not done a good job of deer husbandry so we must inflate our percentages like the other deerfarmers because we surely don't want to look like we don't know what we are doing!!
Now, lt's discuss stawing splitting, The industry norm seems to be splitting a straw cervically in two does. Because this procedure has been done with some success in the past , how does that make it the norm. I am confident that the pioneers in deer semen packaging did not create the first straw thinking that " Hey, we can use this straw to breed two does cervically". Again, the creative skills of the deer farmers and AI techs have discovered that if the does are ready and the semen is excellent then there is a chance that we can split a straw cervically in two does. Once this was done successfully then as the price of semen rose , the splitting of straws cervically became the standard of practice. It is common sense that if a quality straw is loaded with 50 million sperm then if you use the straw in two equal portions then each doe should receive 25 million sperm. Now if the straw is not of excellent qualtiy or has " air bubbles" ( we see this way to often), then we can assume that each doe got less that 25 million sperm if we split the straw. As a matter of record, we check all straws under the microscope before insemination, this only tells us if there are live sperm in this straw, this does not tell us anything else. Yes, we split straws cervically at the request of our clients and Yes, we split straws cervically at our farm so we are not agaisnt splitting straws , what we have a difficult time explaining to deerfarmers is , If the does are in great condition and cycling at tjhe right time , If the semen has been put up so that is excellent quality then there is a better chance of your doe conceiving than if any of the factors are not optimal.
