We can hardly believe it ourselves, but our first consignment to the European market has finally been despatched and arrived safely – hopefully the first Wagyus to arrive in Ireland are now snug inside some lovely Irish recipients by now and this time next year will be scampering around the Irish landscape to the wonder of the locals. The whole exercise was a saga of red tape and protocol from day one, but perseverance and patience finally won out. The last few days were a bit tense, once the embryos passed their (twentieth) inspection and jetted off for London and thence to Ireland – waiting to hear if they had arrived, worrying about which airport had them, what inspectors worked which day, even how long the liquid nitrogen would last (100 days as it turned out, so our five days travel time was nothing). All ended very happily. Congratulations to all concerned. We did it!
No, it’s not the Tardis, nor is it a Dalek…
It’s our tank full of embryos heading off for Ireland!
Attention is now focused on the logistics of sending several more consignments to USA, a doddle by comparison. We are also getting down to the nitty gritty of protocols to South America – each South American country has different protocols, so it’s interesting, but still nothing to the nightmare of Eu rigidity. The good bit is, having achieved export to Eu, now we know we can do ANYTHING!
Our friends at Austrade helped us distribute some flyers throughout South America recently – see our gallery page for pics of our export donors. We’re very proud of the Spanish translations.
We are planning to send some embryos to Colombia to put into recipient cattle there, so we can sell live animals into South America without the problem of export. We are also planning to send embryos to both USA and South America on consignment through an agent. This will speed up delivery times to our buyers, who won’t have to wait for the drawn out export process.
Our heifer herd is proving very popular – everyone wants females! However, we need to keep a good range of genetics for our donor herd, which gets bigger as the demand for embryos expands. We have two donor herds now, one for domestic and one for export orders. The export herd are under quarantine and the domestic herd in similar, but less strict, luxury. We nevertheless have a good stock of heifers available for sale.
Have a look at our gallery of lovely ladies.