One of the Last Inseminators in New Hampshire

By Donna Moxley on Friday, March 20, 2009.

Last year's high fuel costs and continuing low milk prices are just the latest in a string of hardships for dairy farmers.

These days, New Hampshire is down to less than 140 dairy farms.

They range in size from one cow in the backyard to operations with hundreds of animals.

With that loss in dairy farms, a job is slowly disappearing.

Dairy Farmers in the state have just two people they can call on when their cow is ready to breed.

The Keene Sentinel's Donna Moxley has this profile of one of them.

The first thing in the morning, Jackie Bujnevicie checks her answering machine.

Jackie Answering machine

Those are dairy farmers telling Bujnevicie she’s got work.

Their cows are in heat.

More answering machine

Bujnevicie is an AI Technician, an artificial inseminator.

A cow breeder.

Her clients include some 30 farms in southwest New Hampshire and southeast Vermont.
They call her at that special time when a cow can get pregnant .

Once a dairy cow calfs, she can produce milk for about 10 months.

Jackie car sound
Jackie Sunsets:
“The sunsets here are spectacular, it’s gorgeous in the summertime, in the winter it’s gorgeous except when the wind blows because the wind blows so hard here. … Today’s a very clear day so it’s extra good … these are all sugar bushes so you see trees being tapped everywhere …”(:15)

Our first farm is run by John Luther in Acworth.

Jackie getting out of car

Bujnevicie opens her hatchback and the liquid nitrogen tank she’s built into it.

She removes a small cocktail-stirrer-sized straw full of semen.

Jackie milk room
Inside the milk room, she thaws the straw to the appropriate temperature and loads it into her breeding gun.

On goes an arm-length red plastic glove, and she’s ready.

Jackie catch the heifer
Jackie: “Oh, go and catch the heifer John.” (:11 with lead-in)

We’re looking for a cow that’s acting unusual.

Jackie they have the look
Jackie: “They are in heat so they are very active, they walk around a lot, they moo, their ears are up, they have the look!” (:08)

Once we find the heifer – that’s a cow that hasn’t yet had a calf – the procedure barely takes three minutes.

Jackie doesn’t hurt
Jackie: “It doesn’t hurt at all, and when they’re in heat they have this response where they want to keep really still, so I capitalize on that response.”

Jackie bye john ending with “Bye John!”

At the next farm, Bujnevicie explains what she’s doing back there behind a Holstein who doesn’t seem to notice she’s there.

Jackie Inseminates Ambience
Jackie Inseminates
Jackie: “…. underneath her GI tract is the reproductive tract and I can feel this so now I’m sort of putting my hand on her uterus and on her cervix. I’m sort of finding where everything is, and now I’m taking my breeding gun out and um ….I’m going to find a little spot just barely into the uterus to deposit the semen and then hopefully within about 12 hours or so conception will take place.” (:38)

This cow has a fifty/fifty chance of getting pregnant this time.

A bull would be more thorough.

That little straw holds just a fraction of the semen he’d deliver personally.

But Bujnevicie’s product has been genetically tested for special qualities.

Jackie hola ambience
Jackie: “Hola! Anybody in heat?”

The number of professional breeders has diminished dramatically over the past 15 years.
With only about 130 dairy farms left in the state, there’s not that much demand from the farmers who still hire out breeders.

And the bigger farms started learning how to do their own artificial insemination.

Some AI techs have switched from breeding to just distributing semen, but a few have held on.

Bujnevicie really likes certain parts of her job, like the rural scenery and the cows she’s bred.

Most of them are docile, but once in a while they’re not.

Jackie they kick you
Jackie: “…… Every once in a while you get a good kick and then you know you’re good for another year or so.” (:13)

Sometimes they just run away.

She works her way through a crowd of wandering cows on a slippery and smelly coating of manure on the floor, trying to find an elusive cow.

Jackie block her
Jackie Block her, me: okay – I block her here? … Jackie Oh, I’ll get her in the headlock … Jackie So we’re going to try to get her in there, she’s going to go by you YES good job … (then some sounds of disappointment – we lose her again)

At the end of that day’s work, Jackie had visited 6 farms and inseminated fifteen cows and heifers.

The half who conceive will each be producing somewhere between 80 and 130 pounds of milk per day next fall as a result.

For NHPR news, I’m Donna Moxley.