Episode 69: Progesterone | Why You Should Be Testing!

In this episode, Tyson and Dale discuss the ins and outs of progesterone testing for dogs, including machine types, testing protocols, and how to optimize breeding success. They share practical tips for breeders to improve their results and avoid common pitfalls.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hey, what is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Tac Box Podcast. We are here in Texoma with you know in front of our stained glass windows. We're yeah, it's a nice little day. It's actually a little bit cooler this week compared to what we're used to. So that's kind of crazy. And we're here to do episode 69 today, Dale. 69.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

It is a little cooler. I mean, not exponentially cooler, but a little cooler. And we've had a little bit of rain. So that's made it nice. The drugs have gotten to be out a little longer.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yeah. Well, it was like, you know, last week we were in uh, you know, I was like hitting close to 100, you know, high 90s every day. And it was just like, all right, here we go. July's here in Texoma, this is what we're into. And then it's like, oh, it's gonna cool down and only be a high of 90, you know. But then back in Rapid City, it's like 105 every day. They're just getting roasted, you know. Yeah, so it's like uh suckers, you know, you know. Well, you thought we moved to the center of the sun and you're getting all the warm temperatures, you know, and then yeah, it's like yesterday, all of a sudden it's just like, oh, here's three quarters of an inch of rain, and just randomly, you know, here you go. Okay, cool. Or was that the day before? I don't know. One of the days yesterday, maybe something, yeah, day before, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

You know, when these t these crazy temperatures and stuff like this, and there's so many dog shows this time of year. And at the last Oklahoma City show, somebody had a uh had a generator air conditioning malfunction, and they lost a box truck with uh multiple kubas in it. Have you seen that on Facebook?

SPEAKER_03 1:45

I have now.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Yeah, well, just like in everything else, just like you know, whenever you know, we make you make a you make a statement about something, then all of a sudden you're gonna get all kinds of comments. And that's something you have to kind of be well with nowadays. And some of the people with the tinfoil hats, they're making comments too. So of course they they were uh all up in arms because the show committee deemed that horrible accident an accident, and uh they didn't uh they didn't uh call the lady out and shoot her or anything, which was what they were hoping for. And uh the actually the Kuvass Let Club of America made a really good post, uh a good letter kind of addressing it and talking about that stuff, because they have people that were quitting the Kuvass Club because they they didn't punish this person enough and all of this. And just my opinion with my tinfoil hat on. I think that when you have these kind of temperatures and it is this kind of hot, you don't leave your dogs out in the vehicles unattended. You know, all I mean now of course we've always had breaky's phallic dogs, so we've been probably more paranoid than most about that. But you either take them into the showgrounds or someone sitting out there with them, but you don't go off and leave your dogs in a in a van, a box truck, a motorhome, plugged in, or hoping that you don't have any kind of an AC issue, any kind of a power issue, any kind of any issue that trips a breaker and that those animals quickly die. And and I and it happens every year, and I I just it really it's sad and it's kind of it's kind of disheartening. And and then I and I think about the the responses I see online, and I think that's almost kind of worse.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Yeah, well, and it's just like, well, first of all, like accidents can happen, and I hate when like things like that, like malfunctions and and accidental type of things happen, and then the people that I mean, first of all, uh nobody wants that to happen, you know. Think about everything that that person lost, and then we're gonna roast about that too. And it's like, well, what are they supposed to do? You know, it's like you try to take as many security measures as you can, you know. For instance, like I have a temperature gauge and uh, you know, a temperature gauge that hooks up to Wi-Fi, you know, where it's like if if the kennel gets above a certain temperature, I'm gonna get an alert on my phone. So at least on these hot days, if it's like for some reason the air conditioner, you know, all it takes is like it gets a little overworked and it either stops working or it blows a fuse or something like that, and then it's like things can heat up so fast, you know. So it's like it's like you try to take preventative measures, but here here's a scenario. What if I'm three hours away from home and all of a sudden my temperature alert goes off? It's like air conditioner's not working, it's 85 degrees in the kennel. Like, well, what's it gonna be in three hours when I get home? You know, yeah. There's only so much you can do.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

You try to take as much preventive measures as possible, but there is only so much you can do, and there is all but here's there's there's things you can like not do. And one of them is like you're better off with shade and fans, you know, even if it's a little warm and even if they're gonna pant a little bit. Shade and fans, shade and fans, dogs will be okay with shade and fans, you know. Yeah, and I mean it it's it's not it's maybe not as nice as is having air air conditioning, but shade and fans kind of have been around a long time. Takes uh fans are for fans are less likely to go out than an AC unit, and you know, there's a little bit of shade and some air going through there, you know, they got a much a much higher survival rate. But you know, so there's always been uh AKC rules regarding unentered dogs at shows. You'll see that in the premium list. Sometimes they'll say no unentered dogs and shows. I think that I think that we should not allow dogs to be left unattended in parking lots. They either need to bring them in the building or leave them home. I I just think that I think that you know every year when we have this happen, every year, we need it's like at that point, it's like bring them in, haul them on in. Like that show that we were at where those dogs died, there was lots of room in that building. So, you know, haul them on in, you know, or if you can't bring them in, if there's like no room and there's rules, leave them home. You know, yeah. And if you can't leave them home, don't come. Be you know, do shows when you can, you know. I just think that there's kind of like a little bit of a common sense type of thing, like, you know, and I guess as we I say, because we've had break esophilic dogs, and we're just kind of a little bit paranoid about the idea of like, you know, what that looks like traveling with them, and you always think to yourself, you know, I'm not, you know, making every precaution with your vehicle, making every precaution you're trip, and you're always kind of thinking, if something went wrong, what would I do? You know, a lot of times we don't travel during the heat of the day. A lot of times you do, you know, all sorts of stuff, you know. You don't take those chances, you know, not in deadly heat like this. It's just it's just too much, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Yeah, I mean, and that's one of those, it's like, it's kind of like I don't, I don't know why some people think of it differently as kid than like kids, you know, it's like you're not gonna leave your kids in the car and do something like that. It's like you're gonna take them inside, you know. So if you can't, if you can't manage something like that, then it's like you're probably not gonna go, you know, and and you you hear all my kids first, kids first, and all this stuff. And it's like, well, same with dogs, yeah, or any animal, you know, it's like your responsibility to care for them and make sure that they can you know to manage it. So it's like you can't get them inside or anything like that. It's like probably don't go. Yeah, it's fine. You don't have to go.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Yeah, don't go. You know, I mean, for all the the years that like, you know, because we handle dogs and stuff, and we hauled them in. If we couldn't haul them in, you know, somebody was sitting out in the van with them, you know. I mean, and we'd just like we would go back and forth, that type of thing, you know, just like the idea of going off like now when it cools off and it's you know the temperatures are all right, well, then that's one thing. But during the heat of the day, during those peak load hours, you know, and you're counting on that generator a hundred percent, you're counting on those breakers a hundred percent. Wow, that's you're just you're just gambling at that point that you're gambling, nothing's gonna go wrong.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah, and it's like, and you can even feel it yourself. I know, like here is like standing out in the middle of the yard when the sun's out, and it's like the sun just feels toasty and warm. And it's like you walk underneath the awning of the deck and it's like instant reprieve, and it's like nothing changed other than you're not standing in the sun. So it's like like you said, shade and fans, it can do wonders for the dogs.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yeah, uh we've done lots of those shows like that, like over in that Marshall show. You know, just it's it's covered over, it's not it's not air conditioned, but the dogs are fine. I mean, and and when our dogs are fine, I think everybody's dogs are fine because our dogs are a little more fragile than most, you know. And uh but anyway, just I know that was a little bit off talking because we're supposed to be talking about progesterone and stuff, but I did see that letter anybody wants to check that out from Kuvas Club of America. Well done. You know, we're you know, well, really very succinct and stuff, and there it was shared a few times and all that kind of kind of because whenever we go on social media or any kind of these platforms and we throw out something real negative and stuff, this is used against our whole industry, our sport, our fancy, because this is used against us. So while someone's being kind of all superior and judgmental and how they do it so right and stuff, you're really you're reflecting badly, and that's all that is rhetoric that's gonna be turned around and used against us at a later date. And that's really that's not helpful. So try not to be a jerk, you know. Be a little have a little compassion, and then maybe maybe kind of like work towards uh preventing that kind of stuff from happening, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

That that might be a thought. Don't be a jerk. Quote of the day. I mean, that's like one of the hardest things ever for people, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. So, you know, we're 10 minutes in, but whatever. Everybody, hopefully you enjoyed that. But we're uh today we're talking about uh progesterone in general, progesterone testing, machines, a reverse progesterone, why we use it, what it is, how to do it, the different breeding types, and and how you can utilize progesterone to determine natural breeding, TCI, surgical, you know, all everything breeding and progesterone. So why don't we start there, Dale? What is progesterone? And I I guess maybe do you want to talk about what is progesterone or maybe testing?

SPEAKER_02 11:13

High overview, kind of like so so the the whole relevance of progesterone, and which is like for us, we have really utilized a lot in the last 15 years, a lot, a lot. And you really can do so much more with a smaller colony of dogs. Your your your misses are gonna drop exponentially. Your, I mean, I I would say that we you know we're sitting at like uh you know at 98. If you're getting them bred on progesterone, they're going to get pregnant, you know, so that's that's pretty huge. And probably the most relevant part, and you're kind of have talked about this too, is you know, because of course your bitches will sink up a little bit, and then when you breed them, knowing when they ovulated and when they conceived kind of shrinks down your target area of when they're gonna weld, because you can only sit there and and watch them so close for so long. I mean, you're gonna have to go to the store, go to you know, whatever, you're gonna have to go do some running around, and you're gonna have to leave them, and that's when things go wrong, you know. So that if you can target that breeding date, you really you have an idea of when your whelping date is. And that's that's so hugely important for a successful whelp and attending that successful whelp. Have you found that?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

I mean, I don't know if I found it yet. I found I I here here's what I found. I found that yeah, when you have, say, two or three dogs that come into season within five days of each other, say, you know, it's like if if you think about it and you're not breeding on progesterone, you're just breeding natural, gonna throw them in the run with Rusty, and they're gonna tie and they're gonna breed. It's like, well, each dog then has a five-day window, technically. It is like you don't know when they got bred and when they ovulated and and any of that. So it's like, well, I think they got bred this day, so let's go 63 days, and it might not be, you know, and so then when you got three dogs coming in the season at the same time or within a few days of each other, and then you don't know any of them get bred, you could have a full week to 10 days of this window of like, I could have puppies today, but I might not but I could have puppies today. Can I sleep tonight? Can I run to the grocery store? I mean, that's a stressful week or 10 days of not being able to sleep much. So I think that's kind of where you know, like a pedestrian machine really can come in handy is the stress level on on whelping times, but also, you know, I've had a couple of litters lately that are only producing one puppy. And what I where my brain goes to is like, well, if I would have bred on progesterone, would I have got three puppies? You know, like what could I have prevented singleton puppies? And all the research I find is like generally progesterone breeding does not result in one puppy, it's usually always more puppies. So of course. I I think that kind of goes for me as like, okay, it's time to invest in a progesterone machine. There's a lot of options out there. I think one of the scary parts for me, you know, with it too is like the amount of times that you draw blood. I mean, you could draw blood three times on the dog just to get her bread, and then another three times to figure out when she's gonna whelp. So it's like there's a lot of blood drawing. And it's like, can you do that? And until you actually kind of get in there and try to figure it out, you know. So so anyway, that I mean that's kind of my two cents on like why you should have one, I guess. But let's talk more, you know, in depth.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Well, so when you have those, when you have those ovulation numbers and from your LH search, you're going to be able to involve your vet in this too. So so when you turn around and say, you know, hey Dr. Jones, I went ahead and I bred them on ovulated on on the first, blah blah blah. Day, you know, day 63 is here. You know, you can kind of get have some have some caught, you know, some coherent talk with them, and they can say, I'm gonna be available from these hours. I'm gonna so you can kind of it's hard to say, well, keep keep August open because anytime through that month, you know, we could end up needing you, you know. So the progesterone really does make it where you can involve other people in your plants. You can involve, you can involve you know, watching the dogs closer, being in attendance on those whelps, because we talked about that before. Being in a you know, attending the whelp is so important. It's gonna up your survivability you know a whole lot. But when we start talking about like the blood draws, yes, the you have to you're gonna have to get proficient on drawing blood, but we usually take it out of the neck. That's a you know, some people take it out of the leg. Some breeds, larger breeds, that you know, that the leg vein is fairly good, and you can hold it off there and you can get a pretty good draw from that. Uh smaller dogs, it's easier to get out of the neck. You can draw draw it faster and you can pull you know pull it out there. Generally speaking, most of the progesterone machines want you to do serum. So you're gonna draw your blood, usually it's gonna be at least a cc, and you're gonna spin it down because your your test is gonna involve it's gonna try to involve serum. And you know, you'll you'll go from there. Uh fun fact that serum is amazing stuff for treating eye injuries. So if you get some serum ahead, save it in the fridge for the next eye injury, because I mean it's it's good stuff for because you could technically you're not generally when you spin a cc down and you run a progesterone test, you're not using all the serum.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

So it's like you could kind of just suck some of the rest out and put it in a vial and and save it. And it's like absolutely it doesn't when it comes to treating an eye injury, it doesn't matter what dog it's from, you know. It's like serum is serum, right? I mean, it's like you can mix all your serum, just save all your leftovers and put it in a little thing and have a little jar of serum in the fridge, you know.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Kind of a little serum goulash there going on there. Yeah, it's all it's all good. The so let's get to the type of machine.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

And this is there's a lot of different types of machines, and they range from like $2,000 to like $60,000, you know, and and then there's also like within that in my research that I've been researching on getting a pedester machine, there's some that like have little pregnancy test strips. And it's like you put the serum on this little test, pregnancy test looking thing, and you slide it in the hole in the machine and it does its thing, and then there's some where you leave it in the tube and you set the tube in and close the drawer and it reads it on that. You know, it's like there's a bunch of different stuff and types of machines and numbers and all sorts of crap.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

And yeah, yeah, and some of those and and all degrees of accuracy. So a few of the factors that kind of go into picking out your machine is gonna be uh the uh the price of the machine, of course. And does and what does the what does ownership of that machine look like? Is there a service contract on it, or is it is it just like a is it, you know, how uh how much your test strips cost? How what's the availability look like on your test strips? You know, what is the uh you know, how long does it take to get them, all of that? All of these things kind of and and to keep it weird, a lot of these different machines will go ahead and operate on different numbers series as to ovulation, post-ovulation, and then you know the drop, you know, for which which is when you're gonna want to get into uh we're gonna talk about some numbers today, and they're gonna be based on our mini vitis by Biumeryu, where you know, where we go ahead and say our ovulation starts at an eight, and you know, then you know, then we generally like if you're gonna breed them, you'll breed them eight, skip a day, breed them again, and you know, all of that. But biumeriu has cut the breeder end of it out, and they're really no longer offering much in the way of service. So if you buy a Biu Maryu minivitis, be prepared. You know, like uh we got ours 14 years ago and bought it new for 26 grand, paid the $3,000 a year for the service contract, and they actually did service on it last year, and then they told us that they were no longer offering service contract, and uh and so when uh this year we had had a had a failure, and we they turned around and said to the cost bid to repair it was uh $17.5. And so with no service contract, we could turn around and be broke down again, and you know, so obviously we're back in the market and we're gonna be try we're gonna be uh trying some different things to see what we come up with as they're gonna be our new progesterone saying we love the beer mariju, but they don't love us anymore, so they're they're moving on without us, so we gotta figure out something else. A couple of the other different progesterone machines are uh are you know our veterinary only use. So some of them will only sell them to a licensed vet. So they're not within the grasp of the breeder community. You know, that's that's a little challenging, you know. Some of the stuff on the online the numbers aren't hard numbers. So what that what that means is that they're like with the we're we're lucky with the mini vitis numbers. If they were, you know, if they were an eight, they were ovulating, if they were below, if they were a two, they were gonna have babies in, you know, within six hours, seven hours, that kind of thing. A lot of the sub a lot of these other machines, their numbers are what we call soft numbers, and and they're basing it on a drop and a rise, so not the exact numbers. So you're gonna probably need to test them more and also be more aware of your of your days and really kind of keep on to that, you know. Because when the numbers aren't are when it's uh it's a surge or a drop, it doesn't really matter exactly what number it is, right? Because we saw that the other day, we ran some t uh tests on on a machine you got at compared to the the VM area and they were a little different.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Well and it's like you know, I I think part of part of the machine thing and doing the research and I guess where this can get really confusing and how it's hard to pull the trigger is when it's like some are two thousand dollars and some are twenty thousand dollars. You know, it's like I had a machine that was like two thousand dollars and you know unfortunately after I bought it and it was like they stopped making it and oh we're gonna stop supporting tests for it. And it's like well this sucks because I only had it for three months when you decide to do that. But I had some tests. So we started messing around with it and it was like yeah I got a number you got a completely different number so then I tested the same dog again with the same serum like just an hour later same serum and then I get a different number than what I got earlier. And it's just like well the only thing worse than not having a progesterone machine is having a progesterone machine that's not act that like is going to spit out different numbers because like the first one the first number that they it spit out said hey she needs to be bred today. The second number said oh she's not even close to ovulation. So it's like how you know so accuracy is is a big thing that you need especially if you're paying you know $13 to $25 to $45 a test. Like it's got to be accurate, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Right. Well and that's that's kind of the thing where you know the the different uh the different machines have come at different price tags and so some of them will have a low or almost no charge on that but their test prices will be three and four times as much like the mini vitis tests were just a little over ten dollars a piece at their highest point. So that was pretty reasonable you're getting a you're getting 500 tests you know a hundred tests for 500 bucks you know that's okay you know but then again it's not a you know you have to have you have to be able to kind of it's kind of how much accuracy is there so you if you're gonna be working with multiple machines and multiple numbers and it's which is kind of a good thing to run them on different stuff to kind of get a feel for number one accuracy and then number two like how does this test you know correlate the same how how where are they at on this where what is a a a 2.5 on this machine how does that translate to it on that machine and so because a lot of times the vets are going to have different machines than we are and some of the vets machines are better than others because some of them are pretty rando like the uh a lot of people love the IDEX. I've seen a lot of a lot of discrepancies in numbers on IDEX you know there again I think basing more on the rise and fall which would mean you would should test more often you know talking like multiple tests per day because if you get like a a really hard number well then then you're you're pretty you're pretty confident to say oh I'm gonna wait three four days to test again but if you know if this is a one of those things where it could be testing again and and next day it could be totally different stuff. So then you know then you have to test more often and that com figures into your costs and drawing your dogs and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

So how you know like how does one then decide like I can again we're both working on this right now. So it's going it's going happily how do you speak how yeah it's just like it's almost it's like one of the things that I'm noticing is like not a lot of people have progesterone machines. So you don't see a lot of reviews out there. You know so it's like you can see some $2,000 progesterone machines you can see some videos and some reviews on them it's like okay you know I could see this you know working but then a lot of those don't do reverse progesterone. So then you have to decide like am I just you know am I breeding two or three litters a year and it's like I want to run progesterone to make sure that I get this bitch bred and I get as many viable puppies out of as possible but I can stress out for five days on whelping and I'm gonna be like I'm gonna block off this week and I'm gonna be I'm gonna be there 247 with this bitch and I don't need reverse progesterone. If you need reverse progesterone then I see it's like you have to go up to you know another tier type of machine that can run that.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Exactly so all right so let's say you're only breeding a couple litters a year. You're just breeding a couple litters a year you probably don't have the volume to require to need your own test your own progesterone machine. You probably I I I do think as though there's a huge benefit to if people want to learn how to draw their own blood I think that's a huge plus because if you can draw it and spin it down and or or even just take the take the vials with the anticoagulant stuff in there and take it to the vet that sure is a lot easier than taking the dog and all of that you know hauling your dog in heat to and from the back lane. So I mean that's a big plus if you can go ahead and run draw your own blood that's step one even if you don't need your own machine you can either check around find out if somebody if another breeder friend has one and maybe they'll run your test for you or if the vet will if you go ahead and drop blood off with the vet run and they might give you a break if they don't have to draw your dogs and all that you know so I mean that's the first step just to kind of like you know get that going where you draw you got the blood there then then the next thing is like okay if I'm gonna be doing more than this is there somebody I can go in partners with do I have enough to warrant my own machine you know and then kind of kind of go from there. That's just kind of something I mean you know I always thought that that you know that people could kind of work together a little bit on that you know and use their use you know work share resources a little bit because you know where maybe like one person doesn't need it uh need to do it all the time but if there was like two or three people you know sharing in the cost and the expenses it could keep it down. But I think that retail going on retail clinics right now for running progesterone is somewhere around 100 to 125 dollars a test. I think that's retail clinic prices going today. You know maybe we get some feedback on that but uh that's where that's where that's at so if we can go ahead and you know even at that you know if you if you let your bitch come in for if if you have to spend if you're gonna do a few litters a year and if you have to spend three or four hundred dollars on progesterone you know then it's probably worth it because you probably have a better shot of A getting your bitch to conceive getting her to conceive with maybe more puppies and then B knowing when she's close when she ovulated and have a better shot at being in attendance for the well. So those are all options depending as to where you are on that scale.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Well and what region you live in too because I think $125 is probably per on the lower side of what you're gonna find for a vet running pedestrian I know like the vet in Rapid City was like $150 just to run it and then they and then it was like another $75 for them to read it. And I even asked him like can I just read the results myself and it was like no the vet has to read the results so it's like medical you know like a doctor can only read your medical charts you know so it's like so you're talking like almost 200 bucks just to get the test ran and to be told the result. You know and then 90 what 90% of the time you're gonna need to run a second one. I mean you're not gonna usually run one and be like she needs bread today like you you know you're you're gonna always usually run a second one. And so now you're talking another 200 bucks you know it's like okay. And then the time that comes with it I think you know super nice to be able to get up in the morning and grab your coffee and draw blood and not have to load up a dog run to the vet you know wait for them to do their thing and then you know leave and then wait for them to call you back and tell them tell you what the number is and you know oh well you need to come back in two more days like you know it's like come back again. You know it's like okay yeah you gotta play a lot around that especially if you you know what if you work you know and you have a job you can't necessarily come in during the hours.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yeah that well so so like when and you know those numbers when you're doing that if depending on how you want to do it. So if like with we're using those mini vitis numbers when we were going to do natural covers we would breed at ovulation which is an eight or very close to it skip a day and do another one. If I was only going to breed them one time I'd let them hit ovulation and then I would breed them one time in that middle day right in the center. But if I was going to do a surgical insemination or a TCI then I would go ahead hit ovulation and then wait 48 hours because at that point everything has been ovulated that's going to be hit them one time. And then at that point if you want a lot of people that are doing SIs they either have a dog that is hard to collect or they have a bitch that's probably going to need to schedule a section. So when you do a a surgical and you go ahead and say that's good, you know, you've gone 48 hours past ovulation well then you can go ahead and take your surgical date and go 60 days and do a schedule a section and be right in there. You know I mean you can schedule a section and she should actually be a day before she would have those puppies on her own.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

So you know that really I think that's part of what people get wrong too right they always think 63 days and it's like well it's not 63 days from when you're bred her it's 63 days from ovulation correct exactly so so if you're pagesterone saying you know if you're doing a natural breeding and you're doing it you know a day after ovulation it's like well you're really 62 days then and you're gonna like most likely have puppies.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Exactly that that and that breeding date versus ovulation date that messes people up all the time and that's where they get into trouble.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

And what what's the purpose of that? Because it's like you would think naturally you'd want to breed at ovulation so why do you wait a couple days?

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Is it well so you know the so you're breeding at the beginning of ovulation and hopefully there's more than one egg right so eight is the beginning and they're usually they're saying within 48 hours they're gonna be done ovulating. So that's we got all of it we're gonna do so within that 48 hours they're dropping all their however many eggs they're gonna produce that's when that's when that's when it's gonna hit and so natural breedings if you get the beginning and at the end you'll cover everything. If you're only going to do one breeding if you're gonna do one breeding like if you're gonna be I'm gonna go somewhere and take a bitch to breed them I like to target the middle day you know because because you know at the end of it that that TCI and uh surgical you know that's when they're dropping it right on them you know like shaking salt out onto the you know on your fries you know I mean that's so it's not like it's not like you're expecting those little swimmers to go make the way because you know it's like you're just like boop you know and so is that is that why you breed natural you could breed sooner than surgical and TCI because it's like the swimmers got to get in there and do their thing. So it just takes a lot they got to do their thing they got to do their little thing they gotta they gotta swim upstream like the little salmon you know they gotta get on up there and do their thing and and that's you know and you there's all when you're talking about your natural breedings of course you have you know you have the you have the benefit of the tie and all of that. It's very natural. It's like I mean with our dogs I really like to do natural breedings. When you you know side by side artificials are great for some circumstances and you know sometimes they are the viable option. And then if you're gonna do a side by side like just do them the same days you would do natural breedings. You know at least you have you know you then you can go ahead and you pretty much cover everything like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah I feel that's the one of those with like uh if you're gonna AI you know like do a side by side AI it's like have a freaking timer you know because it's like when you think about a natural breeding and a tie it's like they're generally tied for like five minutes you know it could be longer could be less you know I mean it's just my dogs take my dogs they they take great pride in that I mean it can be half an hour. Wow you got some good ones then yeah it is a big deal and when you do a side by side and you're holding the bitch you know and you've you've put the semen in her and you're holding and letting gravity do its job and it's like you know 10 seconds feels like a minute you know like set a timer so you can kind of make sure that you know the things get going and and flowing where they need to flow and you don't put her down and all of a sudden everything just comes gushing right out.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Right. So I mean this is a little bit different off off the off our path there but you know so when you're when you're doing a collection you know for starters you should get get somewhere that you're comfortable that you're not going to your feet aren't going to fall asleep. You know I like to do it standing up so I'll usually put I have little dogs so I'll put them up in like a a cage unit where I can just reach in and I'll take the bitch and do a teaser. It doesn't have to be the bitch you're breeding it can be any bitch because sometimes the bitch you're breeding is going to be a little cow and show Ontario's face off or something. So you have to be able to get them going get them collected and then keep them going. So for like for like the TCI or for the surgical all you need is like that initial real collection that's really just like which would be like the the you know the the dark milky booger of of semen the the colored stuff and then the rest is just fluid right and so you know the fluid is is handy you know when you're doing an AI because you can you need something to run it through the tube with right it's like nature's extender and so you're getting in there but you don't need all of that fluid if you're gonna do a TCI or a surgical you're not that it's going in a syringe is going right in there. But with a with an AI you're gonna need to get close to you're gonna need to get close to what you would have in a tie you know so so I usually kind of figure most of my dogs be you know you know seven to ten minutes on to on collecting you know look roughly give or take it kind of it kind of depends as to how how busy they say with that you know and you know and you usually get a good collection and a fair amount of that and that way you can kind of keep an eye on it. Be careful with those stud dogs when you're collecting them and stuff because you don't want to like break a vein or anything on there or you know and get blood in your collection that's not great. And you know you want to the time you want to like have a little personal relationship with this dog you're gonna be collecting to do the breeding is not the day you need to breed them. Not that's not cool. It's not it's because you're just betting it all it's like can I get him to do it maybe maybe not if you're you're gonna be using this dog get him used to being collected. Make him where he's not like flipped out you know all of those are are are good things and kind of have a little plan in place you know have have somebody there to help you if you need be you know and then so and then usually after I go ahead and and inseminate them and I think uh I think we've shown on past podcasts that we use the rods uh the dosing needles you know I'll usually hold the bitch on her back with her with her her third butt up in the air for oh ten minutes you know just to kind of let gravity do its thing you know kind of keep them quiet for just a moment but just little things small small stuff to help if you came here for progesterone testing and you just gotta uh a little less collecting and AI yeah so yeah right okay so one of the things that people are thinking that you know it it's easy for you to talk about because you've done progesterone for so long and I I've dug into it a little bit so I kind of understand some of it but people have never done progesterone they keep hearing us talk about numbers you know whether it's minivitis or IDEX or things like that.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

So it's like is there only two systems or does every machine kind of like if they use a different system they come with like charts and stuff right that tell you what the TR machine reads.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Right and they'll have charts and sometimes you can go ahead and go to chat GPT and have them match the charts up like what are this what are these numbers correlate on this this this because they're all you know different charts of of that LH surge and then the fall you know and so you know where are they at on their you know on their you know on their cycle and how close are they to ovulation how many hours are they away from it yeah and one thing that I saw when I've been researching too is like it seems like some of those tests that don't use the pregnancy strip style but they use like a bio is like they have to be refrigerated or kept cool.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Have you seen that?

SPEAKER_02 39:51

I have so like with the with the mini vitis the tests were stored cool kept okay so you refrigerate you had to refrigerate okay but the tests that you were working with currently you kept out at room temperature so some were some were in cold storage some were in room temperature when you were working on them except because they would want you to bring them up to temperature before you ran that because that could affect your results. So do you have to take a minute and kind of read about your machine and find out where you are with that find out you know which what what the what the little quirks are on that.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

Yeah and that's where I wish there was reviews but I just don't feel like enough people have it out there and where some of it can get confusing because it's like do you want to spend seven grand or do you want to spend two grand well can I get the same results and the same stuff with a two grand machine as I can with a seven grand machine? I'm thinking it's one of those things where you kind of get what you pay for I I think in this scenario.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

It is what you it is you get what you pay for in like in almost everything else and I think the I think the better the better machines have the you know and then people doing the updates on them and all that it I think you really it come it comes back to you but really if you think about it you know what is a a litter of puppies out of your bitch worth you know how much how much is that exactly what is the dollar amount on an entire litter of puppies go for so then if you think it's like well if that machine can keep me from doing a miss it just made me that that litter right so you know it's or if they can get me an extra puppy out of a litter you know because maybe I do a natural and I get two puppies but if I do you know and if I'm breeding on progesterone I get three or four puppies.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

You know like I know I didn't know if I believed if that was a thing until I had a couple litters of one puppy and now I'm just kind of like I feel like there's something to this here.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Well we have a mutual friend that was doing side by sides with progesterone and doing them and then doing them surgicals on progesterone and was figuring that it was like 1.8 puppies more on the surgicals than the side by sides. That was just about what they're averaging. So you know if that's a if that's you know over four thousand dollars on that one point eight puppy that that adds up quickly.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

That covers your expenses so you kind of have to figure figure where you know where you are because it'll all comes down to the money right you know I mean that you have to you have to and I think that in this game you have to if you can you should probably try to do at the top end of what you can afford and then maybe work with other people to kind of see you know spread out the cost a little bit you know yeah and there's ways to make some of that back too you know so if it's like you know seven grand is a lot to spend on on a machine I don't know if I can justify it but maybe you have three breeder friends that don't have a machine maybe they don't want to go in with you but they want to run progesterone and they'll pay you 50 bucks or 70 bucks a test and you can make 20 30 dollars every time you run blood for for some people you know how can you kind of recoup some of it that way because a lot of these tests also have expiration dates too right they'll they'll be like they last three months or six months so if you buy a box of 10 that only lasts you know six months is like well you might as well run blood for some people and make some money back off of it so these tests don't go bad.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Well absolutely you know they can turn around and you can turn around and do that and and recoup some of your costs you know and and break break that down a little bit especially if you get them to to comfortable point of drawing their dogs and stuff and just dropping blood off for you you know run their tests give them their results you know be able to keep your keep your your supplies going through at a reasonable it's like if you don't have anything that you're gonna breed for six weeks and you don't have anything you know pregnant well then you might not be running very many tests so you might might as well just go ahead and and and do that pick up keep justify your cost you know and I think that's a that's a valid point you know for sure because it all comes down to you know we gotta you gotta be able to afford to do this and be able to afford to do it right and if we can use these tools it's gonna be so much better for your dogs and be better for you and and just it's a it's a win-win yeah so one of the things that I see a lot of machines don't do is reverse progesterone and one of the biggest reasons that you say to have a progesterone machine is to do reverse progesterone so we can be present at the whelping.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

So how does reverse work you know how how when do we start testing reverse progesterone? What does it tell us? How accurate does it get of like you're going to whelp today?

SPEAKER_02 45:00

So there's two two things two major components to doing reverse progesterone. So if you're do are you doing reverse progesterone just so you can pay attention to your bitch and kind of like I'm not gonna go to the softball game or I'm gonna take her with me or are you planning a section you know so are you know so that there you go how how accurate does this have to be once you know once you know the ovulation if you didn't breed them on progesterone and you're just trying to use the reverse to kind of help nail this down then you're gonna have to do more testing because you don't know exactly when she ovulated so you don't have you don't know what your day 60 to 63 is going to be so you're gonna do a bit more testing. So there's going to be a fall we're gonna use the be uh the minivitis numbers so that once they started in and they got within like a four they generally were dropping within that were within two to three days so to well you know where they got into a three they would you know a day and a half two days to well you know a two and they were gonna be getting getting pretty close and some it was funny because some of the breeds would react differently like the cavaliers could be a 2.5 and they might not well for two two more days you know the chin could be at a 2.56 and she could be having puppies in the other room you know so those littler dogs seem to like the numbers would would would happen a little faster uh with with that but once they got into the ones they were pretty much they were in labor whether they were laboring or not whether they had visible labor. A lot of a lot of the vets will go ahead and are super comfortable on doing a section when they are in that two and below you know they're gonna know that your puppies are not going to be so preemie because that is everybody's worst nightmare and what happens all the time is people needing a section trying to schedule it out with the with a vet and then saying well she's this many days bread so go ahead and take them and you know and when they're if there's nothing worse than seeing preemie puppies without hair on them that are gonna you're gonna lose over the next three days because they're not ready to be born.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Yeah. So when do you when do you run the first reverse progesterone test? Is it like day 60 from ovulation I'm gonna run progesterone or do you have like a certain set time?

SPEAKER_02 47:42

I I'll usually start looking to run you know 58 to 60 get that first baseline in there see where see where you're at. And also I also at that time I also like to I I always write down the number that I bred them on. Because two months down the road you're gonna sleep a time or two in between there and you're gonna forget and oh I tested her and she was a I tested her that morning I got back home and I bred her that afternoon and she was a 27 you know and so probably by the time you bred her she was a 38 and so she was you know that bitch was already a couple of days off off of that so she's gonna have she's not gonna go 63 days from when you bred her she's gonna go closer to to 60 days. So knowing when the number you bred her at that's something you should write down and then turn around and you can start planning out that you're gonna start testing her 58 to 60 days before she was going to be due.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Yeah that makes sense so again goes back to the having your your your breed notebook you know there's like gotta keep your little notebook where you can stick yeah where you can have all your your notes and stuff written down.

SPEAKER_02 48:59

Yeah and it comes really handy you can even write down the days you tested her and you can kind of see this bitch ovulated you know she came in on this date she ovulated you know five days later she ovulated 12 days later you know because if you you know there will be patterns you know and and that kind of stuff will really help you be more efficient in in getting them bred and then getting them well. So those are the two things you know get them bred figure out that try not to miss them and then you know figure out when they're gonna whelp and do you need a vet or are you going to plan on doing this?

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

Now is there any do you notice anything where it's like you know some of the research again that I'm doing is like when you're drawing blood it's like oh they should be fasted you know is do you notice anything with that it was like dogs should be fasted or have you not very I have never fasted a dog I've never fasted a dog to draw them because you're just wanting serum so when they're fasting them and you know or they're gonna if you're gonna like do a a bile acids or a protein C where you're gonna like draw them and you wanted to then have them eat and see if their you know what their levels change and all that that kind of that's that's a different kind of that's a different kind of thing you're drawing for. You know but where you're just wanting serum as where they are right now for that LH number you're for you know then you don't need to do that.

SPEAKER_03 50:32

No good.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

Yeah I was just like and when you are drawing you know try to be calm try to have a plan try to have someone help you you know try try not to do this at the very last possible moment you know be calm about it where you can you know do a do a good job you know and if you need to sit down and take a moment you know that's fine. You know just take take a take a little time. Lots and lots of videos on YouTube about drawing you know drawing blood and all that it's not that hard and scary. Once you get used to it you know it's like no big deal.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

Yeah. Well and there's even like I know there's places that sell like blood draw kits where it's like it can come with like a a a slab of like fake skin or whatever and you can practice like if you're scared of the the needle thing and you want practice trying to poke into a vein you know you can get stuff like that to pr to practice on too but I think some you know sometimes you just gotta jump in there and and try to get one done you know and breed specific you know yeah well usually just shave shave the neck and and you know practice with them holding it and you know sometimes you know have the dog be calm you be calm everybody be calm you know and then uh but usually if you can practice feeling the vein you'll know you can then you can kind of hold it in place where it won't roll and and you can can draw.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

It's it it's it's really not that big a deal you know I I don't think it's that you know it's not that hard. Anybody that the anybody that can do grooming and all that kind of stuff they they can probably draw. It's not it's not rocket science. Yeah well and we do have help have help because it makes that makes it easier. Unless you have a big a big calm dog with the big giant veins it's like you know everybody's gonna lay there and just let you draw out of the leg and just lay there and enjoy it. But you know anybody that has toy breeds is there yeah it's just kind of like they don't like their legs touched yeah well yeah and it you know it's like usually like I just should just lift up lift their heads up and turn them out a little bit so they'll make that vein express you know so it's it's not it's not hard but you do need to practice so take your boy take your boy dogs your your stud dogs practice drawing on them a little bit you know and so you know mess around with them.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

Yeah practice collecting collector drawing there you go all right anything else on pagesterone I think I I think it's super beneficial I think everybody should be doing it from the smallest breeders to to the to the biggest breeders I think you know sometimes those two thousand dollar machines are you know if you're a smaller breeder they're worth it you're gonna you're gonna get your bitch bread on them and that itself is gonna pay for itself so I think you know everybody should probably have a pedestrian machine and and be access to one or have access to one yeah I mean because there's nothing worse than a missed breeding.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

I mean this is it's when you're a dog breeder missing a breeding hurts ouch yeah you just you just see those opportunity floating away.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Well then I kind of think about it too is like if if having a progesterone machine and breeding on progesterone results in one more puppy if you're a show person what if that's the best and show winning dog or your next grand champion dog that you missed out on because you did not breeding a progesterone you know you never know you know I feel like that gives you the best opportunity to get the the good dogs out of there too so absolutely absolutely all right what that we'll keep we'll keep it we'll keep it updated as to what we find out on our in our search yeah because we're both kind of playing around right now with what we're gonna do with new progesterone machines so I guess we'll figure it out and and we'll let everybody know from there what we did. We could we can do some podcasts on progesterone machines again here in six months. Yeah because I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of both so for sure all right thanks for everybody for joining this episode of the Techbox podcast you know we have mentioned in previous episodes that we have a show chair on we're gonna talk about show entries and that is going to happen it sounds like in a couple weeks here we're gonna make that happen so stay tuned for that if you keep tuning in like I thought you guys said we were going to do a show chair and we're gonna talk about entries for shows we are it's coming it's just it's coming sometimes you know you try to line three human beings up and schedules it it gets busy and you have to plan it out. So it's coming but uh we appreciate everybody listening taking the time out of your day to listen to this Dale listened to the podcast the other day you know as he was driving you know so it's like yeah tune it in when you're driving and and listen to us and you know we're coming up on the Chin National so if you're gonna be there we'll see you guys in person probably gonna be live streaming it something like that we'll see how it all goes maybe so yeah that'd be cool. Yeah all right all right thanks everybody we will talk to you guys all next week uh have a great day bye bye now bye bye