Technology

TechnologyAI expert

He may not have made it to certain tests as a requirement to a permanent government positions. But Noli Lorenzo,49, is a true expert of a technology, artificial insemination (AI), nobody-else can claim better. Noli exceeds the national average AI success rate (40%) with his 60% AI births of carabaos totaling to 300 out of 500 services in 2008. “It’s really my passion to do AI and carabao dairying since I was a small child. Our income from carabao’s milk was what gave me my daily allowance for schooling,” he said. Now that many livestock workers are needed in big cattle and milk-exporting countries like New Zealand, Noli has a personal mission to rather help Filipino farmers. Putting one’s heart into AI and having a desire to help people are what makes one successful in it.
“One should really be interested in it and not just in the certificate (of training required ) to be able to go to New Zealand.” Noli finished Animal Science at the Central Luzon State University. He had his first AI training in 1989 having started working at the Philippine Carabao Center in 1988 when it was yet the Philippine Carabao Research and Development Center. But since 2001, when he got out of PCC and went later on his way to become a private village-based AI technician (VAT), a different fulfillment caught him with his AI practice. That along with a better livelihood source. “I compare my private work with my work with government, and I don’t have regrets. Here one gets dirty, but my income is higher,” he said. Charge per AI service is P500. He has already been able to send his two children to college, one finishing Agriculture, the other, B.S. Biology. When he was yet a newcomer in AI, Noli got his share of rejections. But as Ann Landers puts it, “People of integrity expects to be believed (and) know time will prove them right,” he persisted in proving AI can work. “When I was just starting as a private technician, nobody believed me that a piece of stainless steel-made stick can make a carabao pregnant. So I demonstrated it could work by doing it on my brother’s animal so I could convince them.” As an AI straw device with a 0.5 cc semen has a million of sperm cells, getting an animal pregnant is really no longer impossible without a bull. And he is carrying a load of those semen daily not only for carabao AI, but for cattle AI too with his supply of 100 straws each for each kind. The cattle semen he gets from the Gen. Tinio Animal Stock Farm of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI). AI, where a sperm from a more superior breed is placed in a female reproductive tract for making the native pregnant with a more productive breed, has been considered a successful technology for years.
AI gives farmers the advantage of having their native animals crossed with purebred Indian Murrah or Bulgarian buffalo. A crossbred offspring of that union can give milk of five liters and up per day compared to a pure native’s two liters. A factor to a successful AI is one’s ability to determine fertility in the animal. Of course, nothing beats a bull’s ability to detect fertility of a female carabao. But somehow since Noli has been very familiar with carabaos, he can determine if these are really in heat or ready for pregnancy through an abnormal touch in or through a mucous discharge from the ovary. “When that is the case, an animal can become pregnant 100 percent,” he relates confidently. An animal can also show fertility through the sounds and actions it makes. However, a lot of times, a false alarm from the owner would leave Noli wasting transportation time and money. But that is also where he comes to educate farmers. A female carabao can only be fertile over a 24-hour period during an 18 to 21-day heat cycle. Sometimes he would be called at night just before this fertility period ends. Those inconveniences he endures for the sake of helping poor farmers. If after a third try, an animal does not get pregnant with AI, he recommends further diagnosis of the animal. He also acts in a way as a veterinarian to farmers by educating them on keeping the animals healthy such as through de-worming and feeding. This way, the carabao gets to become pregnant easier.
Noli also conducts AI together with a system of injecting a synchronization hormone on the dam. This puts the animal in a pregnancy mode three days after injection, although conception rate here is leaner. Now, he is already known to be that AI expert all over Tarlac, not only in Victoria where he resides. He is even called up to Nueva Ecija, although he would at times give way to another technician nearby in order to share livelihood with others. The only problem now is he sometimes encounters farmers who wouldn’t pay even after the animal has already given birth. As impoverished farmers have no recourse but to sell their carabaos when a financial need arises, Noli considers it his mission to reorient farmers on the profitability of dairying in carabaos over just using it as a draft (for plowing fields). He demonstrates that along with tending fields, as he now grows rice on two hectares and sugarcane on one-half hectare, a farmer can have a more comfortable life through dairying. Rural farmers have never extensively made dairying a source of livelihood which is what is being encouraged by dairy agencies like PCC and the National Dairy Authority. “I want farmers to know that milking can give a higher income.” He now has six carabaos with which to hopefully demonstrate both AI and dairying, although only one is a female. And while this one female has already given birth to a female calf, that offspring he gave away to the farmhand who’s taking care of his animals which is an admirable practice in the rural area. He also wants to educate farmers on the profitability and wholesomeness of milking carabaos even after the animal already has its own calf to feed. That is possible specially with a technology on feeding pregnant heifers with mineral supplements.
To promote dairying, he is helping a cooperative of sugarcane farmers on its livelhood potential. A total of 30 out of 60 members of this cooperative already own carabaos. With people like Noli, the rural areas find a gem when others who have skills like him would choose rather to find greener pastures in New Zealand or elsewhere. end----------