My Uncle Oswald(27)

“What was it?”

“The optimum dose was no more than twenty million spermatozoa per cow. When I injected that into a cow at the right time, I got eighty per cent pregnancies. And don’t forget, Cornelius,” he went on excitedly, “that each bull’s ejaculation contains five thousand million sperm. Divided up into doses of twenty million, that gives two hundred and fifty separate doses! It was amazing! I was flabbergasted!”

“Does that mean,” I said, “that with just one of my own ejaculations I could make two hundred and fifty women pregnant?”

“You are not a bull, Cornelius, much as you may like to think you are.”

“How many females could one of my ejaculations do?”

“About a hundred. But I am not about to help you.”

By God, I thought, I could knock up about seven hundred women a week at that rate! “Have you actually proved this with your brother’s bull?” I asked.

“Many times,” A. R. Woresley said. “It works. I collect one ejaculation, then I quickly mix it up with skimmed milk, egg yolk, and glycerol, then I measure it into single doses before freezing.”

“What volume of fluid in each dose?” I asked.

“Very small. Just half a cc.”

“Is that all you inject into the cow, just half a cc of fluid?”

“That’s all. But don’t forget there’s twenty million living spermatozoa in that half cc.”

“Ah, yes.”

“I put these little doses separately into small rubber tubes,” he said. “I call them straws. I seal both ends, then I freeze. Just think of it, Cornelius! Two hundred and fifty highly potent straws of spermatozoa from a single ejaculation!”

“I am thinking about it,” I said. “It’s a bloody miracle.”

“And I can store them for as long as I like, deep frozen. All I have to do when a cow starts bulling is take out one straw from the liquid nitrogen flask, thaw it, which doesn’t take a minute, transfer the contents to a syringe, and shoot it into the cow.”

The bottle of port was three-quarters empty now and A. R. Woresley was getting a bit tipsy. I refilled his glass again.

“What about this prize bull you were talking about?” I said.

“I’m coming to that, my boy. That’s the lovely part of the whole thing. That’s the dividend.”

“Tell me.”

“Of course I’ll tell you. So I said to my brother--this was three years ago, right in the middle of the war; my brother was exempt from the army, you see, because he was a farmer--so I said to Ernest, ‘Ernest,’ I said, ‘if you had the choice of any bull in England to service your entire herd, which one would you choose?’

“‘I don’t know about in England,’ Ernest said, ‘but the finest bull in these parts is Champion Glory of Friesland, owned by Lord Somerton. He’s a purebred Friesian, and those Friesians are the best milk producers in the world. My God, Arthur,’ he said, ‘you should see that bull! He’s a giant! He cost ten thousand pounds and every calf he gets turns out to be a tremendous milker!’

“‘Where is this bull kept?’ I asked my brother.

“‘On Lord Somerton’s estate. That’s over in Birdbrook.’

“‘Birdbrook? That’s quite close, isn’t it?’

“‘Three miles away,’ my brother said. ‘They’ve got around two hundred pedigree Friesian dairy cattle and the bull runs with the herd. He’s beautiful, Arthur, he really is.’

“‘Right,’ I said. ‘In the next twelve months, eighty per cent of your cows are going to have calves by that bull. Would you like that?’

“‘Like it!’ my brother said. ‘It would double my milk yield.’ Could I trouble you, my dear Cornelius, for one last glass of your excellent port?”

I gave him what there was. I even gave him the lees in the bottom of the bottle. “Tell me what you did,” I said.

“We waited until one of my brother’s cows was bulling good and proper. Then, in the dead of night--this took courage, Cornelius, it took a lot of courage . . .”

“I’m sure it did.”

“In the dead of night, Ernest put a halter on the cow and he led her along the country lanes to Lord Somerton’s place three miles away.”

“Didn’t you go with them?”

“I went beside them on a bicycle.”

“Why the bicycle?”

“You’ll see in a moment. It was the month of May, nice and warm, and the time was around one in the morning. There was a bit of a moon shining, which made it more dangerous, but we had to have some light to do what we were going to do. The journey took us an hour.