Doc, you make it sound so easy, but not everyone is set up to AI, and some just plain don't have the inclination to do it. It does require quite a bit of labor. My husband isn't very interested in AI'ing although once in awhile I can get him to do it. The first year we lived here, we AI'ed and we tore up some stuff. For one thing, the people we bought this place from didn't have the best facilities. We handle our cattle very easy, but still, you need to have good facilitites to AI and we hadn't had a chance to improve them yet. (They are much better today.) Not everyone has good facilities. Ask a brand inspector sometime, what he encounters because of poor set-ups. And brand inspecting is nothing like AI'ing.

And honestly, I have seen cattle that have been AI'd for 10 years that aren't as good as some cattle that have been bred naturally. I don't know the reason and I will agree that doesn't make sense. I have scratched my head about it plenty and the only thing I can come up with is that they

didn't get as many bred AI as they thought they did, and many of the cows kept were offspring  from natural service. You know, a lot of folks who do AI, buy pretty mediocre bulls for clean-up. I think it is a good idea to follow up that AI service with good bulls. Too bad there are so many mediocre bulls out there available for purchase.

With that said, I do agree that you can make improvement in leaps and bounds by AI'ing. One thing I don't agree with, is taking a poor to medium set of cows and AI'ing them. Why not start with some good quality cattle, even if you have to buy them? Then AI that bunch. Doing so will put you ahead about 5 years in your breeding program, IMO.