Preparation of your bucks is essential for producing the highest semen quality possible. By following our simple guidelines, your bucks will be ready to perform to the best of their ability on collection day. 

Buck Health:

Be sure your bucks are in proper weight and condition. If they are overweight, they tend to be lazy and not as interested in jumping the teaser doe and when too thin they have difficulty producing optimum semen in a sufficient quantity.

Bucks should be receiving adequate mineral intake all year round. A good quality mineral is vital to a high sperm count and healthy semen motility. If you are in or feed hay from a selenium deficient area, consult your veterinarian for proper boosting of your bucks selenium intake. If you’re in a proven copper deficient area or you have other minerals binding copper absorption, you’ll also need to booster copper levels as well. Generally, this can be accomplished by giving BoSe or MuSe as a source of selenium and a copper bolus 10-12 weeks prior to your collection date.

Bucks should not be carrying a heavy parasite load.  Be sure they have been properly dewormed 10-12 weeks prior to collection.

It takes a buck 45-60 days to produce a sperm cell. That means that these things need to be accomplished well before your scheduled collection day.

Training:

• Socialize your buck: get them used to being around people, especially in close quarters. Touch their side or belly and get them used to people.
• Hand breeding: let the buck jump a doe while a person holds her.
• It’s helpful to stand beside the buck so he has human interaction while breeding.
• Its important to remember that a buck may not have a problem jumping and breeding a doe in a pen, but in a smaller space next to a person it can take a few times for them to become comfortable with the process.
• DO NOT run your bucks with your does. Bucks that always have the option to breed willing does may not be as willing to breed a doe not in a full standing heat. The possilbiliy of teaser does not being in a strong heat on collection day exisits.
• If possible, keep the bucks separated from one another as well.

Clean Out:

To help ensure your buck produces the best semen possible, he will need to be cleaned out prior to collection. This increases your odds of producing high quality semen by starting the process of removing the stale and abnormal sperm cells from the system.

• Cleaning out requires the buck to ejaculate multiple times in the days before the collection for semen freezing.
• Try to clean out the buck at least 3 to 4 ejaculates.
• 72 hours prior to collection day, stop all breeding and allow him to rest.

Buck Preperation:

To make it easier to read tattoos, please have the bucks ears and/or tail cleaned and have baby wipes on hand so we can be sure to be able to see the tattoos.

To keep the semen from being contaminated, we ask that all bucks have their underside shaved from their belly to behind their sheath. This, along with trimming your bucks feet so that he is able to mount the teaser doe repeatedly if needed, should be done a few days in advance.

Things that can negatively affect semen quality & the freezing process:

• Administering antibiotics within 45-60 days prior to collection.
• Use of BoSe or MuSe (selenium) within 45-60 days prior to collection
• If your buck is known to have issues such as old age, recent illness, previous issues with collecting, please advise us prior to attempting to collect so that other ideas and options can be discussed.