Is an Embryo Transfer Course Worth It? What Cattle Producers Save Doing Their Own ET
If you have ever paid for custom embryo work, you know the invoice: a collection fee, a charge for every embryo, a charge for every transfer and a farm call on top. Sooner or later a lot of producers look at that bill and ask whether they should just learn to do it themselves.
Here is an honest way to work out whether an embryo transfer course pays for itself on your place.
What does custom embryo transfer cost?
Price lists vary by region, but the structure is the same everywhere. One Texas embryo business, for example, lists:
- Synchronization and superovulation: $290 per donor
- Breeding: $75
- Collection (the flush): $250
- Embryos: $75 each - their average is six
- Transfer: $100 per recipient for direct-thaw embryos
A Missouri practice charges $45 per embryo to freeze or transfer fresh. Add farm calls, housing if your donors go to a facility, and recipient synchronization, and the custom bill for one flush and its transfers adds up quickly.
One custom flush, line by line - and what is left when you do it yourself.
What changes when you do it yourself?
Some costs stay whatever you do: drugs, semen, recipients and liquid nitrogen. What you stop paying for is labor and skill.
Using the price list above, one flush averaging six embryos, all transferred, comes to about $1,665 - and $1,375 of that is breeding, collection, embryo and transfer fees you would no longer pay. Only the $290 for drugs stays on your bill.
Flush three donors twice a year and that is roughly $8,250 a year in professional fees - on that one price list. Rates in your area may be higher or lower, so put in your own numbers.
What the training costs
The Comprehensive Bovine Embryo Transfer course is 4.5 days of hands-on training for students who are already competent at artificial insemination. Tuition is $3,650 at this writing. Add travel, a room in Senatobia and your time away from the place. Then the equipment: flush catheters and media, a filter and search dishes, a stereomicroscope, freezing supplies and the liquid nitrogen tank you may already own for semen.
Against the example above, a producer flushing a handful of donors a year can recover tuition within the first year - faster if you also transfer purchased embryos into your own recipients, which saves the transfer fee on every one.
The savings that never show on an invoice
- Timing. You flush and transfer when your cows are ready, not when a custom crew can fit you in.
- Better pregnancy rates. Knowing what happens in the flush and the transfer makes you better at the parts you already do: recipient synchronization, heat detection and embryo handling.
- More donors. When each flush no longer carries a professional fee, it becomes worth flushing your second- and third-best cows too.
- Purchased embryos. Buy embryos from elite genetics and put them into your own recipients yourself.
When is it not worth it?
- If you will only ever do one or two flushes.
- If you do not have the facilities to handle recipients well - sound pens, a good chute and a place to work.
- If you are not yet comfortable with artificial insemination. Embryo transfer builds on AI skill, which is why our embryo transfer course requires AI competence - and why our Combined course exists.
Recipient cows waiting their turn on transfer day.
What you will learn
Our cattle embryo transfer course covers the whole job: donor selection and superovulation, recipient synchronization, embryo flushing, finding and grading embryos under the microscope, freezing, thawing and non-surgical transfer - all hands-on, on live cattle, in small classes. The techniques at the heart of the course were developed by Dr. Elsden in the 1970s, and the International Embryo Technology School has been teaching embryo transfer for over 35 years.
You don't need to be a veterinarian to take our courses - they are open to anyone 18 or older. Veterinarians and veterinary technicians can earn RACE-approved continuing education credit on the Comprehensive Bovine Embryo Transfer course.
- Already competent at AI? The Comprehensive Bovine Embryo Transfer course is your next step.
- Not yet? The Combined AI and Embryo Transfer course teaches cattle artificial insemination first and embryo transfer second, in one trip, with no prior experience required - for only $200 more than the embryo transfer course alone.
You will learn a skill you can use on your own herd and, in some states, offer as a service - the rules vary by state, so check yours.
References
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