Primary Product: Artificial Insemination of the Buck.

Image Still from the Movie Chicken Little.

Remember this: Chicken Little yells, “The sky is falling!”

When I first became familiar with the deed of artificial insemination, it was as a veterinary employee. I knew of the birds and bees but not in the artificial sense. This procedure varied in undertaking and complication, depending on the species, size and disposition of the animal. 

In brief, once a request was made by an owner to artificially inseminate it was either done naturally under supervision, or with frozen or warm caught semen. Frozen semen would be thawed then viewed under a microscope to see if there was sperm motility, even though motility doesn’t determine the outcome of progeny. 

Warm caught semen was collected with a sterile collection tube at the end of a sterilized latex funnel while the doctor masturbates the dog after exposed to a receptive female. 

Once the semen was collected, it was inserted with a plastic pipette into the uterus of the female then the female is made to stand on her head to use gravity at its best for a period of time. As for watching this procedure, while the male doctor got on his knees seemed to be quite emasculating, especially if the staff was all women. I would think as a man you would definitely have to be secure in your manhood. I won’t lie; there was snickering from the female camp.

This also reminded me of the time a Veterinarian I worked for had a sight hound he wanted to breed. The female was inseminated. When the DNA tests were done to verify the father, the report came back the intended was 98% not the father. Lucky for him, the biological donor was a better sire.When you have people that are not licensed or educated in how to perform such procedures all kind of things can ensue i.e. fraud.

I will not get into the details of Artificial Insemination. The goal is to attain quality progeny in numbers in regards to success rates. Genetically speaking, each animal in a litter or birth will be genetically unique unless you are cloning. The idea here is how many babies you can get to capitalize on financially.

The benefit for artificial insemination using deer would be for conservation and restoration if some dire disease, natural catastrophe, or other affected the deer population in a negative way towards extinction. Other benefits are: To influence trophy antlers, improve genetics in a herd while discouraging excessive inbreeding, breeding for quality characteristics of meat by-products, and the knowledge gained by scientific inquiry. 

When you consider the previous article on trophy antlers, you then start to think what about those breeder farms. Bucks and doe are in an isolated environment where the owner is selecting certain genetic lines of meat, antler velvet, by-products, quality hunting specimens, or giving people what people want.

The other night I had a conversation with another female hunter where she said she hunted deer for the meat because of its quality. I then thought without asking her, does she really mean that she prefers free range deer over genetically farmed domesticated deer? 

This is a good question to ask because the international trend right now is the denial of genetically modified crop farming in countries. The outcry is against GMOs. This could eventually happen in deer farming with regulations where deer are over a period of time, altered to keep up with the supply and demand while replacing beef and chicken as dominant food sources. 

This replacement will be based on the knowledge that deer meat (at this time free range animals) are healthier. What happens when the deer are no longer free range? Can they have the same value or meaning to a hunter when they are like Bessie the Cow or Dorothy the Sheep?

When you consider the undesired buck that has been set loose on the farm’s allocated game preserve, you already know this isn’t the choice deer. Choice deer are kept as breeding stock so you are getting second best as it trickles down the deer’s hind leg.

I then asked myself, what would my feelings be when I had to decide on choosing between deer in the wild as a free agent and someone in agriculture deeming the beloved quarry nothing more than a primary product.

I was reading the Updated June 2012 Deer (Venison) Ranching Profile on the AgMRC website where it is disclosed that the main markets are upscale restaurants and processed sausages. Not only is the agriculture industry picking and choosing to get what one Veterinary told me is the cream of the financially consistent influx of product service, but this primary product is being introduced on a plate by a chef that knows how to make the most of quality meat for return service even on a pricey market. I refer here to the restaurant I saw on television that has flavored foam at insane prices because it is advertised as gourmet.  

Just as the selection of meat genetics is driven from the farm to the plate, so is the selection of the person eating the food. By choosing to eat this meat you have been targeted as a resource for money much like the deer is for by-products. Reality of life.

I also read that these farmed deer are disease resistant. If a deer escapes, the farmer must immediately retrieve the deer. Why the hurry? If the deer is disease tolerant then surely it can’t bring a disease back to the herd. Or can it? We could reference indigent people here. Early explorers brought small pox to the indigent people because their genetics was isolated away from having the immunity of their foreign counterparts. Could the reason they are not getting sick is: The deer herds on the farm are isolated away from wild populations and co-mingling?

There was also positive reference on nourishment.

If I lived on a farm as a deer and received nutrition from a source daily, I would be efficient at converting food. 

My experience with my own independent wild herd can be validated through the fact they can strip a four acre plot of everything leaving only the twigs and vines behind. This is apparent when deer like to stay on one plot because that is what they know and all the surrounding plots have been removed of their forage to make way for agriculture. These wild deer do not have a timed feeder to eat from.

We have seen pictures of bucks referred to as monster or franken-deer; these huge massive bucks with overtly trophy racks that seem to be God's gift from heaven only to find out some human pulled out his chemistry set and started up the centrifuge.

I wondered if I could find an example to contrast humans against deer. Could this be a case of questioning whether farmed Super Sires are actual quality bucks, or have impressive physical traits that are short lived because they are going to die by the bullet.

What about the by-products of domesticated deer harvests?

Let’s jump in the AOFH time machine for a jaunt to a not so distant past (12 Dec 1935) in Hitler’s Germany and compare the Nazi Lebensborn Program. This program was birthed due to high abortion rates, declining German births, and promoting Nazi eugenics. 

Here you have the agreement and protocol of persons of unblemished Aryan ancestry could only procreate with racially fit women. Racial experts would examine the medical history and family lineages for certain qualities and breed a racially pure Germany. Maternity homes were run much like deer farms where women are bred to selective sires, be taken care of, to  give birth, and progeny managed through adoption or some other nefarious use.

What makes humans quest for such? Is it money, greed, curiosity, or more?

Let’s look at the crazy mind behind this: Heinrich Himmler-crazed chicken farmer at large. Is it really a short step off the deep end? Himmler was obsessed with his experiments to breed pure white chickens while running a poultry farm before World War II. Himmler’s initial intent as far as we know was: Not to experiment on humans (who knows for sure?) I question this because the Germans were siring blond, blue-eyed children. Ultimately, it was assessed that all this breeding for a pure German race to replace human dogs of war was found to be less than expected. Because Himmler couldn’t directly manipulate the genes, the crap shoot began. 

The outcome was less than desirable specimens that were not considered agents of a Master Race. Undoubtedly the intent was there. I guess when Genetics deviates from making sense to blatant evil schematic depends on the Agenda it is based around. Otherwise, could we assume that all these Caucasian blue-eyed blonde babies were no more than the efforts to get a pure white chicken? Could we say that this is the agenda of Super Sires? Goal-wise, is it to breed a huge buck with enormous scoring antlers for esthetics only?

When you compare and contrast, I am not pointing out that all deer farmers are Lil’ Himmlers. It’s just a weird sense of breeding programs and what the inevitable desired outcome is. I wondered if farmed domesticated deer should be totally taken out of the schematic of hunting because the deer are not wild. They may have come from wild stock but eventually with all things domesticated the physiology of the deer will probably change due to de-evolution or evolution. 

I went to a seminar by Spencer Wells where he reiterated that the human jaw was shorted with the advent of agriculture over a period of time. This could happen to deer. Maybe? You’ll have people promoting this sort of domestication of deer for their own financial gain and not propagation of species, which is being done a lot in the United Kingdom and other places,  if you go by social media articles and conversation.

By the AgMRC’s Updated June 2012 Deer (Venison) Ranching Profile value of livestock was $111 millon because they  are using low numbers at high prices.

As far as business development goes, when the ideology of deer farming being three times as profitable as traditional livestock, you can see where this is being pushed as an option on the plate or elsewhere. 

Deer farming breeds all kinds of deer merchandise. The money train keeps rolling along the tracks. The AgMRc even denotes that farm-raised deer are a livestock operation where deer are considered livestock. If this is true then deer become owned. I thought that was one of Theodore Roosevelt’s ideals is: No person should own wildlife but yet…..here it is. 

I have read in the United Kingdom that estates own wildlife but here no one owns the wildlife running free. Do we want to become like the United Kingdom where the wealthy privileged gets to dictate to the hunter that the wildlife is their property?  Does this ownership drain away the ethos of hunting to some degree by limitation of availability to hunt? Eventually will the wildlife disappear only to be found on farms with a tag in their ear, a laparoscope in their gut, and people seeing the animals as “OPP?” You know what I mean?

On a final note, if you have someone with an agenda that will improve their lifestyle as a part of the economically privileged elite, while they blow scads of smoke up your rear end for their gain by saying how great something is, then you buy into their scheme is this like drinking Snake Oil? Or is Serfdom on the horizon?

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Referenced Internet Links:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111170/Stolen-Nazis-The-tragic-tale-12-000-blue-eyed-blond-children-taken-SS-create-Aryan-super-race.html

http://theodorerooseveltinthebadlands.com/html/documents/TR_and_conservation.html