. She now manages a team of AB techs in the Waikato and Northland regions for Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), an agri-tech company that specialises in herd breeding.
AB techs play a key role in keeping New Zealand’s dairy industry humming. For cows to produce milk all year, they typically have to calve every 12 months. Rather than rely on bulls to impregnate cows the good old fashioned way, the industry has a much more reliable and kinder way to get herds knocked up again, and that is through artificial insemination. The ability to use semen from numerous “superior sires” improves the herd’s genetic diversity and desired traits in calves. Increasingly, those who do this line of work are women, with the flexible hours attracting many mothers who can be home in time for school pickup, according to those in the industry.
Ellie van Harlingen, 38, was a “townie girl” working at an early education centre in Whangārei five years ago when she watched in wonder as her father-in-law, a dairy farmer, inseminated a cow. She soon signed up for her two-week AB tech training and then entered a year-long apprenticeship. The day she spoke to RNZ, she had just finished inseminating about 60 cows, a slow day.
“I have not met a tech that does not enjoy being a tech. We are a weird breed,” says van Harlingen, a mother of three teenagers who lives and works in the Northland region for LIC. The cooperative has about 800 AB techs who inseminate over four million cows each year.
“A lot of people will look and think, ‘Well, how could you enjoy that? It’s really hard to explain.”
Ellie van Harlingen has been an AB tech at LIC for about five years.
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Inseminating a cow requires precise timing and, on average, takes an experienced AB tech, about 30 seconds. An AB tech inserts an insemination pistolet loaded with bull semen through the cow’s vulva and into the cervix. When the AB tech expels the semen, they will be in up to their forearm (with the help of a very long glove).
“Every cow is a puzzle. Every cow is different, and you’ve to get to this perfect position inside the cow and you create life.
“The next year you go back to your farms and you can see all the calves in the paddock and you’re like ‘Wow, I made those.”
During peak season, AB techs like van Harlingen will work seven days a week. She opts to start at 6am so she can be home by midday to ride her horse and then pick the kids up from school.
However, she has strict orders from her daughter not to turn up in her overalls because she can be covered in a bit of cow poo.
“And she probably doesn’t necessarily want to tell her friends what mum does. ’Mum sticks her arm up a cow’s bum’ because they would go ‘Why?’”
Speaking of that, van Harlingen’s job is a useful segue into learning about reproduction – bovine, or human.
“My daughter was, gosh, she would have been maybe about seven when I started being a tech, so yeah, she learned from an early age what it’s all about.
“They’ve been at home here, but on a glove and felt what it’s like doing and gone ‘Oh, it’s disgusting,” says van Harlingen, who lives on a dairy farm and whose husband is a dairy farmer.
When it comes to the money, AB techs get paid per cow. An efficient AB tech in their fourth or fifth year on the job can make up to $80,000 in the three-month season, according to Ballantyne–Turner.
“You don’t have to go back to university and do a degree in something. The training is just literally two weeks… and then you do your [one year] apprenticeship the following year, so there’s not a huge investment before you actually get the rewards.”
Since Ballantyne–Turner first entered the AB tech world seven years ago, she has seen increasing numbers of women at training events. About 80 percent of current new trainees are women, she estimates.
Brett Andrews, the national AB manager for CRV, another New Zealand company that specialises in herd quality, says that about 50 percent of its AB techs are female, a growth of ten percent in the last four years.
“They are very focused. They are very professional and, I’m sorry, they are leaving the boys for dead.”
Andrews attributes the growth in the female workforce mostly to word of mouth, female AB techs telling their friends and family about the role. He has also noticed growing numbers of younger women interested in the role, which has the possibility for international work in places like the UK and the US.
Kelly Withers, 34, is one of CRV’s 150 AB technicians in North Canterbury. She also trains new technicians, and estimates that about 80 percent of new trainees are now women, something that wasn’t the case when she started eight years ago.
“I think us females have a bit more, I want to say understanding, how would you say it? We’re a lot calmer and kinder and see the animal for what it is.”
“We also have small arms,” she added.
The job allows her to make more than she would make all year in a part-time job, “but I pretty much put my life on hold for three months,” she says, adding that the job has restored a sense of financial independence and identity that she partially lost when she became a mum.
Working as an AB tech can get stressful. She has to organise with the extended family to do the morning routine with the kids because her husband is often overseas for his work. This season, she inseminated close to 400 cows on some of her busiest days.
“As soon as I finish, I’m back in mum mode.”
