We’re continuing the adventures in Colorado agriculture science with the USDA’s ARS, NAGP*. Confused? Don’t be. Dr. Phil Purdy, Physiologist extraordinaire, decodes any confusion that the acronyms might cause into something practical and meaningful with on-the-ground common sense in the field of assisted reproductive technology and fertility studies. Part of his job is to collect germplasm on small animals and large. Cow, sheep, pig, chicken, mammal, bird, fish, bug – if you can name a species used in United States agriculture, he has probably collected it. And we’re not just talking about sperm and eggs anymore. Those are definitely included, but also embryos, organs, gonads, and tissue (gesundheit) as well.
But he does the long-term-study-and-analysis part too, so he’s not just a pretty face that leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Dr. Purdy and Oogie McGuire are continuing years of fertility studies on the Black Welsh Mountain sheep to find out what might be most successful and what variables are important. They are using Oogie’s Lamb Tracker Program, Dr. Purdy’s portable laboratory, a supermarket checkout scanner, animal microchips, surgical tubing, PVC piping, and a very large stick to collect information and do long-term data mining to help improve breeds and save agriculture as we know it from a world crisis. (BTW, all things in this paragraph were true, and some a little bit exaggerated, but I bet you won’t guess which.)
But from our three-day adventure shooting footage at Desert Weyr of the artificial insemination (A.I.) collection, examination and storage process, we can say that Dr. Purdy does leap fencing and animal chutes in a single very-high bound as necessary, no cape included. And cranky, randy, very large horned rams notwithstanding.
(*United States Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service, National Animal Germplasm Program, in case you didn’t have it memorized already.)
Some links to get you started…
https://www.ars.usda.gov/plains-area/fort-collins-co/center-for-agricultural-resources-research/paagrpru/docs/animal/phil-purdy/
https://www.ars.usda.gov/people-locations/person/?person-id=33783
https://www.ars.usda.gov/people-locations/people-list-offices/?modeCode=30-12-30-05
https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/project/?accnNo=433404
https://www.ars.usda.gov/plains-area/fort-collins-co/center-for-agricultural-resources-research/paagrpru/docs/animal/animal/
https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2009/sheep-breeding-improvements-arise-from-ars-university-research/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_insemination
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749072015306460
https://desertweyr.com/
https://desertweyr.com/ai-class-results/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Welsh_Mountain_sheep