New Semen Tank

I am new to doing my own AI. For the last 5 years I have had an experienced neighbor/friend breed my cows. For convenience sake ( timing of breeding) I will do my own this year. I need my own tank. What do I look for besides service interval and price? I do not anticipate ever getting over 100 + straws in the tank at a time and that is with allot of leftovers each year. ( I have 50 cows and some bulls.  Thanks for your experienced help. Steve

I have a MVE tank that holds 540 straws.  It has been a great tank.  Long holding time and easy to handle.  I would recommend going with this size tank as opposed to a larger capacity tanks since it is lighter and easy to transport.  I bought mine a last year form my Genex rep for around $400.  They usually run them on sale in the spring.

Something to remember is that the quoted semen holding capacity of tanks is based on the canes being full of ten straws each and also each canister being packed right full.  For example the 540 straw tank mentioned above has six canisters and they are packing nine canes into each.  In practice when you are breeding cows it is next to impossible to have nine canes in a canister and pull individual canes up to remove semen and then lower them back into the canister in a timely fashion.

Personally when I am using my tank this size I do not want anymore than six canes per canister and preferably less than that so that I can located the proper cane, remove the semen, and replace the cane quickly.  Furthermore if you are like a lot of people you will end up with a lot of canes that only have three or four if not fewer straws of semen in them.  It is entirely possible that your hundred straws of semen could be split up into close to twenty different canes which in my opinion half fills a 540 straw tank.

If Bulldaddy purchased the tank that I think he did  MVE makes the same basic tank with different canisters that they quote as holding 720 straws of semen.  This higher capacity tank is supposed to be the same price or even slightly cheaper than the 540 straw one and in my opinion probably would be a better deal.

The best tank for your money is a MVE XC 20. It holds 720 straws for 20 weeks. It is light enough that you can carry it around fairly easy but big enough that you only have to fill it up about every three months. It can cost anywhere from $550 to $710 depending on where you buy it from. It is a great tank and will lastyou a lifetime.

With that many cows if you are like most folks you end up buying semen and having as previously said some left over. I thought one tank would hold us. But I now have three tanks and they are all full. I should clean them out but I just can't part with the semen. There is always that one cow you might use it on.
If you buy used there is nothing wrong with that but make sure it is active and has been storing semen. If it is dry then you really need to let it sit a while to see how much evaporates. I bought the MVE that holds 720 no Ebay on sale for 450 and a used one for 150 and ABS sells there demo tanks every spring for 500. My best tank has been the used one. It holds the best.

I started AIing a couple of years ago and have about 40 cows.  I contacted a Genex rep (any of the others would work also).  He said that if I gave him time he could find me a used for for $100-150 that was in good shape and that he had been filling an knew it would work.  In this area there are guys retiring all the time.  I have gotten along fine with 540 straw tank, not near full yet...

We have one of each, started out with the smaller tank and it filled fairly quickly and bought the second one, we also have less than 50 cows but you just kind of collect the semen when you are trying to match bull to cow, if you are breeding everthing to one bull you may be fine, but that generally doesn't happen.

The same thing has happened to us... Start out with one tank because we keep our herd around 50 cows..buy a cane, use 5 straws, then have them left over.  The next year you buy a cane of another bull, use 7, and have 3 left.  Pretty soon the tank gets hard to pull the straws out when breeding.  Did I mention that you'll decide to FLUSH your best cow or buy embryos from someone else, and those will be in your tank too.And if you're like me, lots of them. (Anyone want to buy some embryos..I have 110 in the tank now).  After 20 years, we have 3 tanks, two that hold 720 straws and one that holds 2100.  Accelerated Genetics has a sale on tanks in the spring. I bought a new one last year.  I found them to be the least money..same tanks as ABS.   ABS will sell tanks in the fall that people rent for the summer, but you need to watch them since some come back kinda beat up, but they have a full guarantee.  Genex has a spring sale as well, pretty close to Accerated's prices.