Five unplanned pregnancies in seven years would be enough to drive most women into a convent.
But when it happened to Colleen Biggs, she embarked on a search foranswers that culminated in an ovulation prediction kit sold in 2,000 Canadian pharmacies.
Colleen Biggs’ fertility adventures began in the spring of 1990 when she became pregnant with her and husband Dylan’s first child. Jocelyn’s birth, on Dec. 31, 1990, was a momentous event for the cattle ranchers from Hanna, Alta., because after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 19, doctors had told Biggs she would never be able to have children.
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“The health nurse and the doctor said, ‘oh, it was a miracle, there’s no way you can get pregnant again,’ and 21/2 months after I had her, I was pregnant again.”
With Julia’s birth, Biggs decided to put a stop to the surprises and had herself fitted with an intrauterine device.
It didn’t work, and Maria was born in August 1993.
“I went from being not fertile to extremely fertile.”
The Biggs next tried condoms but two more pregnancies followed, the first ending in miscarriage and the second in the birth of Hannah in the fall of 1997.
No longer trusting conventional birth control methods and unable to use the pill, Biggs decided it was time to start at the beginning and learn about her own body and fertility. During her research into natural family planning, she learned that the natural increase and crystallization of a woman’s biosalts during her fertile phase can be noticed by examining saliva under a microscope.
Biggs found commercial products that used saliva to monitor fertility, but was disappointed with them. She said the microscopes’ magnifications were too low and the instructions were inadequate.
In the same way that a farmer will go to the welding shop if his cultivator needs improvement, Biggs went to the laboratory to make a better kit.
In 1997, pregnant with Hannah and armed with what she had learned while studying environmental sciences at the University of Alberta in the late 1980s, she set up her own scientific study, following proper protocols and using U of A labs.
The 10 women in the study, who came from her community in east-central Alberta, agreed to place a sample of their saliva on a microscope slide once a day for six fertility cycles, which starts on the first day of a woman’s period and ends when the next one begins.
She took her 1,800 slides to the U of A’s laboratories and photographed them using microscopes with three levels of magnification – 50, 100 and 200.
For months she drove the 320 kilometres to Edmonton once a week, spending the day in the lab and returning to the ranch at night.
After a year of analysis, she determined that 100-power microscopes worked best to interpret biosalt crystals in saliva, and following a five-month search, ordered 15-centimetre-high 100-power mini-microscopes from an Asian manufacturer.
Poring over microscope slides also made it clearer what kind of information women needed to use the new kit.
When her research was complete and the kit components purchased, she packaged a microscope, a set of instructions and six reusable slides in little white cardboard boxes and advertised them in a health food magazine and a Catholic newspaper.
In the next 18 months, 3,000 women bought the kit directly from Biggs, which allowed her to contact 600 of them to get their feedback. She discovered that many women needed information about fertility and ovulation, and the booklet that she prepared for the final product included 28 pages, many of them dedicated to reproductive issues.
She spent $60,000 to design a marketing package, which included the box, instructional booklet and information kit for pharmacists, and in late 2000 the Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy chain agreed to stock what she had named Ovu-Trac. Besides the 850 Shoppers stores, another 1,100 Canadian pharmacies buy the kit from medical distribution companies.
She put the kits together herself until mid-2001, but now hires a Calgary company to fill the boxes and ship them to warehouses.
She sells about 400 kits a year, although that will likely increase now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved sales there.
Although the kit developed out of Biggs’ need to stop getting pregnant, it is marketed to women who want to get pregnant. She said only these women are committed enough to spend the time, sometimes as long as four months, learning about their fertility cycles.
While time management is important to any business, it is particularly necessary for the Biggs because the Natural Fertility Awareness Co., which they set up to market Ovu-Trac, isn’t their only business. In 1995, they decided to switch their cow-calf ranch to a pasture-raised, organic operation. Through TK Ranch Natural Meats, the Biggs slaughter their animals using low-stress methods. The meat is cut in nearby Duchess, Alta., and returned to the Biggs’ ranch, where she packages, labels and delivers it once a week to a refrigeration company in Red Deer, which trucks it to retail customers.
It’s a labour intensive operation and Ovu-Trac’s arrival didn’t make it any easier.
“When you want to create something from nothing, which is essentially what we did with both companies, you have to work very, very hard,” she said.
“I was working seven days a week for many years to get where we’re going.”
The relentless pace, heightened by her decision to home school their four children, ages 6-13, eventually exacted a price.
In 2001, just as the Ovu-Trac marketing train was picking up steam, Biggs was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that causes inflammation, redness, pain and swelling. She’s convinced that the culprit was the strain of too much work.
Ironically, after years of searching for an effective way to avoid getting pregnant, lupus has left her unable to have more children.
Today, she controls the disease through her diet and has found better ways to do the work of two businesses.
A structured week is vital.
On Monday she phones all the stores that buy the company’s meat, and monitors Ovu-Trac’s help line. Tuesday is spent on Ovu-Trac business, while meat orders are processed and delivered on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, she catches up on unfinished business. The children do their schoolwork in the morning and help her with the meat business in the afternoon.
“The future looks very, very bright, if I can just manage my time,” she said.
