WANTED: AI (artificial insemination) information and pictures

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Starry Night

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First, before anyone asks why I want to AI a chinchilla....... I don't!

Why am I asking? - I'm taking Artificial Insemination this term and I have a very country (sheep farmer/shower/breeder) instructor that is in his late 30's early 40's. A classmate and I thought it would be hilarious to attempt to ask him straight faced if we could AI a chinchilla, and give him all the information to make him think we were seriousl

We were just laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes when we were talking about it, and picturing him collecting a male chinchilla :cry3: And several other people we talked to in our class of 16, thought it would be hilarious as well. But no, no collecting going on either.

I have googled it, but found limited information. Can anyone help? I especially need pictures...

ETA: I want to set up my laptop to record use asking him about it. lol :cry3:
 
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Sorry about my bad spelling once again, I am going on lack of sleep.

The "use" in the ETA sentence is supposed to be "us".
 
I cannot even picture trying to get a chin to hold still to.... well... **ahem** get what you need. :shocked:
 
It can be done... collection of the males involves electroejaculation (if you have access to PubMed, you can probably find the papers) - among other things, anesthetizing the chinchilla (to decrease stress on the animal) decreases success of ejaculation by 60ish%, and decreases volume of semen and number of viable sperm in those animals that ejaculation is successful. There are other papers out there that talk about electroejaculation of chinchillas, and there may be some on artificial insemination (I have a feeling I saw an article or something on AI in chins at some point... but don't remember where)
 
Every week someone posts about their chin humping their hand, I don't know why people think it would be hard to collect.

There was an older rancher who used to AI and do work in it, but for the life of my I can't remember their name, or if they are even still alive. So... sorry, I'm no help. But it has and can be done I've been told.
 
I'm just curious about the use of this? I mean, why would someone use AI versus breeding the chins naturally? I would think that there's plenty of chins around that you could find some to get along with the qualities you wanted.

I mean, I understand the use of it for other animals like race horses and things, but it doesn't seem like there are that many chins that you just have to pass along their genes? I'm just thinking like the time and money involved wouldn't be worth it?
 
alli713 said:
I mean, I understand the use of it for other animals like race horses and things, but it doesn't seem like there are that many chins that you just have to pass along their genes? I'm just thinking like the time and money involved wouldn't be worth it?
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Actually, you can't do it in race horses if you want to register your horse (and it needs to be registered to race). At least, not in Thoroughbred racing; not sure about Arabs, quarter horses and mules.

At least one of the papers I pulled talked about the utility of the process in reviving the endangered wild chinchilla.

And some of it (now) is a "just to see if we can." Probably was explored at one point to see if it would be worth it - less risk of injuries to animals, possibly increased use of a male with several females, etc. But somone had to do the research at one point... lol
 
So they don't even use the AI with the retired racers? That's what I was thinking of, but I don't know much at all about racing, I guess I'm thinking more horses in general since I know that they do do it with horses.

It's an interesting thought but you would think that if the time or whatever was worth it more large ranches would be doing it?
 
Someone posted a great article about this on CnQ, maybe they will share it with us again. I believe is was very traumatizing for the males and they had to be put to sleep in order to get any good sperm. I believe it would be helpful in getting more of the results you want in breeding without dealing with intros and all that. But it could definitely cause huge problems, let's say you have one male you love, so you use his sperm on a ton of females. Later down the road, five years even, he develops genetic malo. Imagine how many kits would be effected? Unless you are doing something very specific and wonderful, I don't see it being good.
 
Edgar Hykes. They also claim beige males are best for collection.
Riven said:
Every week someone posts about their chin humping their hand, I don't know why people think it would be hard to collect.

There was an older rancher who used to AI and do
work in it, but for the life of my I can't remember their name, or if they are even still alive. So... sorry, I'm no help. But it has and can be done I've been told.
Click to expand...
 
Chinniechantel said:
But it could definitely cause huge problems, let's say you have one male you love, so you use his sperm on a ton of females. Later down the road, five years even, he develops genetic malo. Imagine how many kits would be effected? Unless you are doing something very specific and wonderful, I don't see it being good.
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That is the problem with AI in all species. Look up Impressive (a quarter horse stud who was super popular, and it turns out he started a line of horses with a genetic muscle disease)

Thoroughbred racing is very conservative in some ways. They require all breeding to be live cover. If you recall the whole Barbaro thing, one of the problems was that they were trying to get him sound enough to cover mares, not just sound enough to stand in a stall. Almost all other breeds of horses do allow AI, just not thoroughbreds.
 
I always though with Race horses they did AI to keep the male from getting injured. I do belive they use it for quarter horses. And I know they use AI in cows. I have a friend who breeds long horned cattle and she is always talking about the bull she bought that month LOL. She is certified to do it too.
 
equus_peduus said:
That is the problem with AI in all species. Look up Impressive (a quarter horse stud who was super popular, and it turns out he started a line of horses with a genetic muscle disease)
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Yet people are still breeding Impressive foals that test positive for HYPP. :banghead:

Anyway, I think if AI was able to be done with minimal stress on males/females - that it might help with slow breeders, hard to pair chins, and keeping your top animals safe from being attacked. However with such small animals, I don't see how it could be easy.
 
Jinul said:
Yet people are still breeding Impressive foals that test positive for HYPP. :banghead:
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Last I heard (a year or so ago) was that the QH registry requires testing prior to registration; if they test positive, even heterozygous, they aren't allowed to be registered. Which is pretty cool. The point of my bringing Impressive up, though, was that here's a super popular stud with the heavy muscling that QH people want, and that wasn't showing any signs of the disease that he later became famous for, that was widely used because of AI - his genes are all over the QH world now.

ETA: just looked it up - starting with the 2007 crop of foals, any H/H (homozygous affected for HYPP) are not eligible for registration, though it looks like N/H (heterozygous) are eligible, but they have a thing on their papers that says they are heterozygous. Impressive descendants that are N/N (normal homozygous) may not need to have their offspring tested to have their foals qualified for registration.
 
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Riven said:
There was an older rancher who used to AI and do work in it, but for the life of my I can't remember their name, or if they are even still alive.
Click to expand...

If they were alive, I would hate to bother them to just to be able to play a joke on my instructor....
 
They have a clone of "Sweet Little Lena" it's name is "Sweet Little Lena 2"... At least, that's what my instructor said when I was taking genetics (I did not verify the information though).

I'm going to learn how to AI cows, horses, sheep, and pigs... I'd be too worried to do it to a chin though... bigger animals have more room, if you know what I mean, so if you get it off just a hair you have room to correct the error before something bad would happen (unlike a chin).

But for the people who did use to AI, I wouldn't think it would be very feasable for them to do it especially since chinchillas are such slow reproducers.
 
Another reason AI is used is for uniformity, so may be in chinchillas if you wanted many chinchillas with same hair for pelting or if you wanted to breed you female with a rare male across the world. For our calves we AI all of our Heifers to a bull that throws small calves for easy birth but grow quickly.
Just my thoughts.
 
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