Perform animal breeding procedures
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The documentation around care is highly automatable and that is where the time goes back. The care itself needs physical presence and someone accountable for the outcome, so this work stays where it is.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Direct care and assistance |
| Jobs that do it | 3 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents |
| O*NET activity | Assisting and Caring for Others (4.A.4.a.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 3 occupations that perform it.
- Crossbreed animals with existing strains or cross strains to obtain new combinations of desirable characteristics.
- Select animals to be bred, and semen specimens to be used, according to knowledge of animals, genealogies, traits, and desired offspring characteristics.
- Perform duties related to livestock reproduction, such as breeding animals within appropriate timeframes, performing artificial inseminations, and helping with animal births.
- Observe animals in heat to detect approach of estrus and exercise animals to induce or hasten estrus, if necessary.
- Package and label semen to be used for artificial insemination, recording information such as the date, source, quality, and concentration.
- Measure specified amounts of semen into calibrated syringes, and insert syringes into inseminating guns.
- Inject prepared animal semen into female animals for breeding purposes, by inserting nozzle of syringe into vagina and depressing syringe plunger.
- Examine semen microscopically to assess and record density and motility of gametes, and dilute semen with prescribed diluents, according to formulas.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing for the care itself. The time comes back from the documentation around it, so the stack worth building is the recording one, on the pages for that work.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
Who does this work
3 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Care for plants or animals”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Care for animals | 6 |
| Provide care for animals | 4 |
| Care for plants or animals | 3 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.