Moroccan King Cancels Arkansas Semen Order

The King of Morocco wanted bull semen from Arkansas, then changed his mind. So, a Texan jumped at the opportunity.

When the First State Building & Loan Association of Mountain Home went under in 1987, lawyers for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. discovered assets the S&L possessed from Ozark Mountain Embryo, which had also filed bankruptcy. However, the viability of the assets — hundreds of vials of frozen Santa Gertrudis bull semen and cattle embryos — was uncertain.

Three different law firms, including one from Fayetteville, were hired by the FSLIC to research the S&L’s assets. One lawyer discovered Dr. Diane Balich of the Lincoln Veterinary Clinic, an expert on cattle embryo.

The lawyer came to Balich and asked if the semen and embryo were indeed as valuable as the million-dollar figure being tossed about by the S&L. He admitted to Balich that the vile of frozen semen looked like nothing more than “milk” to him.

“They were somewhere around 15 years old and I’m sure they were probably from a very popular donor at the time,” Balich said. “They had been kept right and were still alive. We sent them off to Texas A&M to be cultured.”

Balich said it was too difficult to put a price on the semen.

“I guess you could say it was potentially worth a million dollars, but what’s potentially mean? I mean, if you’ve got a race horse and he comes in second at the Kentucky Derby, what’s his semen worth? Probably less than before he came in second,” she said.

The legal red tape was drawn out for about a year and half. Meanwhile, lawyers had to continue paying Balich for her time and expenses handling the embryos and semen, including monthly bills for liquid nitrogen to keep them properly frozen.

“It’s like an old car,” Balich said, “how much money are you gonna keep putting into it?”

Balich wrote letters to the Santa Gertrudis Association, which pointed her to the Moroccan government. It seems Morocco was coming off a 10-year drought and the Santa Gertrudis breed best survived the drought.

The King of Morocco was very interested in buying the semen and embryos, to the point that Balich carried on conversations with the country’s ambassador to the United States. The King wanted to use the semen and embryos for research at a university, and the paperwork was supposedly in the works for the 600 embryos to be purchased for $10 each when it suddenly was called off.

That’s when a Texas breeder jumped in and purchased the in-limbo semen and embryos for about $2,000 to take it off the FSLIC’s hands.