The recipient ewes are sedated and placed in a cradle and have their bellies shorn and cleaned in preparation for embryo implantation.

After what seems like months of frantic activity with the Sydney Royal and preparation for the embryo transplant program, finally on Thursday the eggs were implanted and it was all over until lambing. On Tuesday we helped our friends at Royalla Dorpers with their ET program and then it was on to us for ours on Thursday. The whole process is very labour intensive and we couldn't have managed it without the generous help of our friends and neighbours. The heavy work of lifting the sheep into and out of the cradles is very tiring when you are not used to it (maybe we should have been trawling the local gyms for helpers). It is also important to keep the sheep as calm as possible as stress can impact on the success of the program. On the human front stress was added to the program when the power company let us know just days before that there would be no power on the day! Fortunately we were able to convince them of the importance of timing etc and they lent us a generator. That solved the problem of power to the shed but didn't help the situation of providing lunch and morning tea to 10 people - Th

We spent the morning preparing our recipient ewes for the embryo transfer program. We replaced any missing eartags and numbered the plain coloured tags. It is almost impossible to write anything that we maybe able to read again on the moving ear of a sheep but ever optimistic we pressed on. Each sheep received a mineral drench and then we inserted the cidrs which is the first step in making all the ewes cycle at the same time so when the transfer day arrives they are syncrinised to receive the embryo at its exact point of maturity. Pretty amazing technology. It has a higher sucess rate than human IVF mainly because the animals involved don't have any existing fertility problems. We were preparing 100 recips but when the last sheep was done we still had a cidr left in the bag - someone slipped through the net (or we stuffed up). The next step will be removing the cidrs and giving a hormone injection.

Took seven of the young ET lambs ( these are Visagie bloodlines  from South Africa ) to the AI centre, hopefully to cooperate and provide semen for future use, Should the rams prove worthy, we will make the  genetics available to those who wish it.
 I seem to spend most of my life in my truck. Running a stud is certainly not money for jam, but wouldn't want to do anything else.