C’mon, guys, fess up. We’re not going to be mad — we just need to know how, and dear God why, someone decided to steal a “large quantity" of cattle semen from the Northern Irish town of Clogher.


For context, Clogher is a town with a lot of cattle. Those breeding the cattle often inseminate them artificially. When the semen isn’t being used, it’s stored in straws in cryogenic tanks. Yes, straws. I don’t know why, either.



According to the BBC, a burglary took place between October 21st and 23rd in which someone walked off with “two artificial insemination tanks” — in other words, big ol’ cylinders filled with liquid nitrogen and bull sperm.



Even though bull sperm can be expensive — earlier this year, semen from “Australia's most expensive bull” was sold for $24,000 AUD at auction — BBC author Louise Cullen notes that “this theft has surprised those in agriculture.” “Tools and quad bikes, even animals, are more easily stolen and sold on,” she writes. “Semen storage is a specialised industry, and as one farmer put it to me: ‘You don’t mess around with liquid nitrogen.’”


One of the reasons for this surprise is that bull semen is typically only expensive if it has pedigree. If you have a really sexy bull, for example, you can put its semen on the market at a high price, as other farmers may want to breed hot bulls of their own. However, if you launch onto the bull semen scene with two random tanks of stolen jizz, people are going to have questions. Where did you get this jizz? What kind of bull is it from? Why does it look like you’ve drunk some of these straws? The list goes on and on.


For the time being, the police are searching for more information and hoping that whoever took the bull semen will decide to bring it back on their own. If you happen to be the thief, please reach out to the Clogher police — and maybe consider picking up another hobby.