Frozen bovine semen

Bovine semen is the stuff that comes out of a male cow when he ejaculates. It contains little cells called sperm that can help make baby cows when they join with a female cow’s egg. Sometimes, farmers want to save this semen to use later to make more baby cows. But they can’t just keep it in a jar because it would go bad pretty quickly.

So what they do is freeze it. Freezing means making something really cold so that it doesn’t change or spoil. Just like when you put an ice-pop in the freezer to keep it from melting. Farmers take the bovine semen and mix it with some special chemicals that help protect it from getting damaged when it is frozen. Then they put it in a little plastic tube and put that tube inside a container called a straw.

They freeze the straws of bovine semen really fast so that ice crystals don’t form and break the sperm cells. Then they store these straws in a special container called a liquid nitrogen tank. Liquid nitrogen is a super-cold liquid that keeps things frozen really well.

When a farmer wants to use the frozen semen, he takes it out of the liquid nitrogen tank and thaws it out. Thawing means warming it up slowly so that it goes back to its normal temperature. Once it is thawed, they can put it into a female cow to help make a baby cow.

Freezing bovine semen is a great way to save it for later and make sure that it doesn’t spoil. This helps farmers to have lots of healthy cows to make lots of yummy milk and beef for us to enjoy!