$75,000 in Bull Semen is stolen from frederick farm !!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Washington Post
Author: Nelson Hernandez, Washington post staff writer
In his nearly 16 years in the Frederick County Sheriffs office, Detective Chuck Jenkins has seen a grand theft tractor and thousands of more-pedestrian crimes, But he's never seen anything quite like his most recent whodunit: the case of the stolen bull semen.
The burglary took place Sunday in Smithsburg while Eric Fleming was away from his farm, Stone-wood acres. When he got home that night from a visit to relatives, he found that the 70-pound semen tank he had in an outbuilding was open, with the electrical cord pulled out of the liquid nitrogen refrigerator, Jenkins said. Sixty five "straws," containing the precious bodily fluids of 40 to 50 bulls, were missing.
Jenkins said they were worth $75,000 dollars.
" I will give a nice fat reward for any information on semen that was stolen from my tank today," Fleming wrote in a message posted on the Breeders' World Web forum this week. "It was a mother load of semen that i consigned to Denver sale."
"How Awful!!!" a member wrote back. "I hope you find who did it, and press charges. That is just plain disturbing."
Fleming, who breeds Shorthorn cattle, did not return several calls yesterday and was not at home when a reporter visited his red farmhouse on Catoctin Mountain.
It took Fleming years to build up his stock of bull semen, which he had planned to sell January at a cattle show in Denver, Jenkins said. Frozen bull semen is big business because it saves the transportation cost of putting a bull and a cow into the same pen to breed. Frozen semen can also last for many years, outliving the bull who produced it.
Nonetheless, collecting and keeping the semen can be a challenge. Bulls, for all thier reputation for virility, are notoriously finicky about breeding. Thier sperm counts are generally low, moreover, it is difficult to collect samples from a bull.
Semen is put in a 4 & 1/2- to 5-inch long straw and is labeled with the name of its sire. From there, it is frozen, to be injected later into a cow, known as a dam. Breeders keep careful track of everything: A registed animal will have a well documented pedigree going back generations that attest to its genetic fitness. A lack of documentation could help authorities catch the culprit, Jenkins said - an honest buyer would know that the semen had been stolen.
Jenkins said the thief, if he intended to sell the semen, would have to have a portable freezer of his own. Because of the specializied knowledge and equipment required to keep and sell the straws, Jenkins said, the numbers of potential suspects is limited, but the culprit could have come from a distant state. for that reason, both Jenkins and Fleming have publicized the crime in the hope that someone will provide a tip.
Jenkins said he had a lead but declined to provide details. "I don't know how far its going to take me," he said.
Jenkins realized there was also a certain lowbrow comic value in the theft of a bull's seminal fluid, but he did not want anyone to laugh at this case. It is a serious criminal matter, he said.
For a farmer, it was "The equivalent of someone coming and stealing your ExxonMobil stocks," Jenkins said. ''As funny as it sounds it's a livelehood."