Retirement calls for Stan the AI man

“Even though I wasn’t brought up on a farm I went to agricultural college at Lawers at Comrie. I stayed in Dunblane at the time, and I got a job as a general farm worker at Keir Cawder Estates. Bob Fotheringham, who was an inseminator at Stirling, suggested I apply for a job at the Scottish Milk Marketing Board (SMMB) as an inseminator, this was 1970.

To become an inseminator you had to go through three months of training at Scone by two vets from the Milk Board.

I remember going to the slaughter house and we would practice insemination on the beasts that were going for slaughter that night. We had to sit an exam with the department to get a licence, there was no DIY AI back then, so we were in great demand.

I was maybe covering 15-20 farms a day, but it wasn’t too bad as they were all close together and the herds were much smaller then. When I look back I could name 20 dairy farms between Stirling and Denny. Now you could drive from Stirling to Glasgow and there would be only one.

My work took in a lot of smallholders, there were lots in the area who had just 6-10 cows, and I would do work for the Water Board shepherds at Loch Katrine, they all had a couple of cows. In general it was suckler and dairy cows I was inseminating, a lot being pedigree.

I remember it was £1 17s 6d for each animal. Our wage was about £18 a week, so it was quite expensive. At that time I was working for a large operation, the SMMB had around 15 offices dotted around Scotland – it was 1975 that I got a job in the Stirling office.

Back then we supplied everything the farmer needed for the AI service. The SMMB had Southbarr Cattle Breeding Centre, at Erskine, and Newlands, at Scone, they bought the animals at the bull sales and took the semen from them, there may have been around 100 bulls at that time in the stud.

The names I remember as stand out studs are Scottish Pride and Scottish Neptune, those were the big names that people wanted. When I started it was all Herefords and Shorthorn, Friesian and Ayrshire. Then the Simmentals, Limousin and Charolais came in, the continental breeds started to become popular, this would be around 1970.

When working from the Stirling office, the driving was quite intense, though I always enjoyed driving, it was an excuse to see all different parts of the country and get paid for it.

I covered from Stirling to Buchlyvie, the Fintry and Balfron area really. It meant that I knew my customers really well, and I can say I still class them all as good friends even now.

Daily routine

Customers would phone the office every morning before 10am, so we never knew where we were going each day. We would divide the calls up between the inseminators on duty. By then we had our own set areas, you would work out your own route – you pretty much went the same way each day – and headed out.

You had to always have plenty of loose change on you as it was necessary to stop at a phonebox and call the office throughout the day to check for any changes in the route. The SMMB had a clever and simple way of getting us to the right farm before SATNAV was invented.

Each farm had an account number which was made up of the digits of the longitude and latitude of an OS map showing exactly where the farm was, which meant I had stacks of OS maps in the car.

It meant you were out in all weathers, at all times of the year.

I started out in a Ford Anglia, and then I think the company car was a Ford Escort. It didn’t really matter what the weather was, you still had to get out there and do the job. You just carried a shovel in the car in case you had to dig yourself out of the snow.

When I were heading to a dairy farm, I knew that if the tanker could make it to the farm, then it was likely I would get there too.

Changes

In 1997 Genus bought over the service. That brought along a lot of changes.

I was then required to sell dairy chemicals and silage additives. It doesn’t sound like much fun, but the farmers needed this kind of thing, so it wasn’t a hard sell and it did make the job more interesting. The more you got to know your customers the easier it was.

I ended up working from home, as there were no offices any more. You would have a mobile phone and it changed from posting all my paperwork in the beginning to the Genus head office in Nantwich, to having to email it.

There was a semen centre at Lanark where we would go every week to top up our nitrogen and pick up the semen we had ordered the week before.

Farms

Some 20 years ago there was so much more staff on farms, which meant I could catch up with the chat, but later on, maybe in the last 10 years there was less staff and folk would just leave the cow in the same place they always left them.

I’d be left a note telling me what animal had to be inseminated with what. I would put the beast into the crush, do my job and then I was off without seeing anyone.

DIY

In the early 70’s you had to be licensed to inseminate cows by the Dept of Agriculture and semen had to be stored on licensed premises. 

In the mid 1970s the rules for storing semen were deregulated and this made it legal for semen to be stored on farms. This is one of the reasons why the AI service changed in Scotland.

It was the early 1990s that farmers really started doing their own AI. They were trained by the Milk Board. I always felt it was like cutting our own throat.

You were doing away with your own expertise. As herds got bigger the company started to concentrate on pushing semen sales rather than the AI service. That meant there were less guys on the road, but I was travelling further, maybe 150 miles a day.

Sexed semen

Nobody wanted bull calves, and they had been tinkering with the sexed semen for the last decade, but technology has got better and better.

However, it still isn’t 100%, I would say around a 60% success rate. Some folk did better than others, it depended on the management of the cows I feel.

Nowadays the future for AI lies with Reproductive Management Systems (RMS), which is a full service where the inseminators call into the farm every day and chalk the cows, then they come back and service them.

With bigger herds it is difficult for the farmer to be on top of it, so they can now leave it in the hands of the inseminators, the vet and the nutritionalists who are all involved in these packages.

Perks

I think the biggest perk was seeing the countryside. And being paid to see it. I had to be outside, I could never have worked inside. I enjoyed driving, and in particular I enjoyed travelling around Crieff and Lochearnhead, I loved that route, it always felt you were out of the rat race, it gave me a peaceful feeling.

When I got my 25 years service award with the SMMB, it stated that I had carried out hundreds of thousands of inseminations, and had travelled more than 1,000,000 miles, and I still had another 20-odd years to work.

Another perk is the friends I’ve made. I’ve been to more birthday parties and weddings than I can remember.

For example, one of my customers, Mrs Nisbet of Claddochside, stands out as she and I shared the same birthday.

Every year I was invited into the porch in the middle of my working day. Willie, her son, would have the best china out and the cake was all there. I would always send her a card, and she would send me one. This went on for years.

I’ve made life long friends through this job. You were made as welcome as one of the family, which is a lovely thing. I’m still in touch with lots of these people, I still meet them at the shows and the market.

I have to say I always got a kick out of seeing a pen full of calves, and knowing there was no bull, and I had a certain pride in knowing that I had a hand in putting them there.

I always got the job done. I don’t remember any disasters along the way. The service was seven days a week, but I would do 10 days on and four days off.

The only days we didn’t work was Christmas day or New Years day. I’ll admit it was difficult when I had a young family. I missed out on my boy’s weekend activities, like rugby, my wife Liz had to take them. That was the biggest drawback.

Retiral

I was awarded the Highland Show medal for 40 years service in 2010. It was presented by Anne Logan at Stirling Show. That was a nice highlight of my career.

I had a night out in Thornhill for my retiral dinner with good friends and colleagues who came from all over Scotland.

As for filling my time now, I still have my heavy goods licence, and I drive the cattle float for Robert Graham.

I drove it to the Highland Show, the Yorkshire, and Dumfries show this year. I also enjoy curling and the season is about to start at Stirling and Perth, which I enjoy.

I was ready to retire, so it’s not been a difficult transition. It’s nice to enjoy driving again without worrying about the mobile phone ringing and having to go from Linlithgow to Helensburgh.

I’ve been kept busy, both my sons have bought houses and I’ve been helping them decorate, and sort out the gardens.

It’s been a great stepping stone from full time work to being retired. I wonder now how I managed to fit in a full time job.

I also have another role as a mole catcher. That keeps me busy in the local area when the weather is fair. I enjoy it because I get to be outside in the countryside.

We had our first grandchild recently, Greg, so there is plenty of babysitting being planned.

Over the years I’ve heard all the usual farmer’s moans, of course, but it has been nice to see up to three generations of the one family work their way through their family business.

It’s been a great career. I’ve enjoyed the driving, working outside with cattle, and meeting a huge amount of folk who have become good friends.”