It offers a whole host of advantages in goat breeding:
- Best breeding material available at any time without risk of disease introduction
- Breeding progress on your own farm is accelerated
- Individual pairings are easily possible
- Your own trestle can be used for longer, so fewer additional purchases are necessary
Of course, where there is light, there is also shadow:
- Heat observation must be intensified
- The financial outlay for insemination of your own stock – course, purchase of equipment
- There are costs associated with external insemination
- Seeds are currently not available for all goat breeds kept in Austria
How is it prepared?
The AI technique is simpler for goats than for cattle. Frozen semen is the rule. A portion of semen is thawed and filled into the insemination pipette. These pipettes are the same as those for cattle, only shorter than those for goats. After appropriate cleaning, the vagina is spread with a lighted speculum and the external cervix is visited. The semen is then deposited as deep as possible in the cervix. The first insemination success for experienced inseminators is around 60 – 70%.
Attempting a new technology
A pilot test for sexing goat sperm is currently underway at the HBLFA Raumberg-Gumpenstein. Sexing is the separation of female and male sperm cells before preservation. The sperm portion therefore contains (almost) only sperm cells that carry the desired sex chromosome X (female) or Y (male). Such sperm has been used successfully in cattle for years; 90% of the calves born have the desired gender.
This technology is still very new in goats. The first tests in Austria are currently taking place as part of a research project. A different method than cattle is used to sort the sperm cells. In the HBLFA experimental stable, 25 goats inseminated with sexed semen are currently waiting for the ultrasound examination.
Dates for the goat insemination course at the Thalheim/Wels branch:
07. - 09.03.2022
28. - 30.03.2022
Register at 07272/47011 460 or by email at
