Commercial Ova Transfer Claimed Possible
Could Revolutionize Dairy, Beef Breeding
By 1980 Americans will efficient traits has always
demand well over 31 billion retarded progress,
pounds of beef. That’s more than ~
130 pounds per person, per year.' Artificial breeding has been a
These figures mean U.S. boon to both beef and dairy in
cattlenren must increase cow dustries for more than 35 years,
herds by some 20 million head, The process of artificially
about 40 percent more than -collecting, freezing and injecting
present levels. An ambitious bull semen has met only “half”
goal, at best. the challenge of reducing time
needed to select superior animals
and spread their impact. The
cow, the other half of the story,
still is able to produce only one
calf per year. Actually, national
average production is only 3.5
calves in a cow’s lifetime.
Now, a great leap .has been
taken to - compress the
generations required for the
cattle upgrading process. A new
practical science called “ova
transfer” has now become
More production per cow may
be the practical substitute for
simply adding more cows to
herds. This means a need for
superior calves that grow to
higher slaughter weights at
younger ages. Animal scientists
have made significant gains on a
continuing goal of increasing
pounds of beef per cow per year.
But time required to breed, test
and select cattle for the more
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dairymen.
More specifically, ova transfer
is the process of transferring
many fertilized eggs from a
single superior cow to several
ordinary cows. The science could
bring rapid advance on the goal
of more pounds of beef per cow
per year.
First U.S. company with
facilities to provide ova transfer
services commercially is .In
ternational Cryo-Biological
Services, Inc. (ICBS), of St. Paul,
Minn. The company announced
its services earlier this month at
a Minneapolis symposium on
“The State of the Art of Ova
Transfer”, featuring many top
researchers in the field.
Dr. Harry Rajamannan, ICBS
696-2990
Hol-MhT i' h q e uid
liquid supplements leader
!f JOHN Z. MARTIN
f ' New Holland RDI
president, explains the com
pany’s new service this way:
“We are commercially
providing cattlemen the service
of removing large quantities of
fertilized eggs from their
selected, superior cows and
placing the eggs in other less
perfect cows to be carried
through pregnancy to birth. The
‘foster’ mothers contribute
nothing genetically to the calves.
They are merely incubators for
the superior embryos. The result
is several superior animals per
year from a single highly
valuable cow. For the first time,
genetically superior cows can
greatly multiply their influence
on blood lines, as bulls have been
doing through artificial in
semination. The ultimate result
will be to increase the average
beef or milk production per cow.
Ova transfer will prove to be one
of the greatest genetic im
provement tools ever used by the
domestic animal industry,” Dr.
Rajamannan claims.
For more insight into exactly
what ova transfer is, let’s follow
Dr. M. L. Fahning, head of ICBS
research, through a typical case.
The setting is a modest, but
intricately outfitted research
farm near River Falls, Wise.
Cows involved in this ova tran
sfer include a donor, who will
yield fertilized eggs, and several
recipient cows, to which eggs will
be-transferred. All animals in
volved have synchronized* heat
cycles so transfers will “take”.
Key to the ova transfer process
is “superovulation” of the donor.
Drugs are used to stimulate
release of multiple ova for fer
tilization by artificial means.
Without superovulation, a cow
would normally release only one
ovum per heat cycle.
Five days have passed from
fertilization until transfer time.
The donor, cow is anesthetized
and wheeled into surgery to a
special hydraulic-lift operating
table. A small incision is made in
the abdominal cavity and the
reproductive organs exposed.
The fertilized eggs are “flushed”
from the oviducts into a small
dish using a special solution. An
experienced ova researcher,
Maija Maki-Laurila, examines
the collected fluid and locates all
fertilized eggs. This time, she
retrieves six eggs in the 8 to 32-
cell dividing stage. ,
First of six recipient cows to
receive a transfer arrives in the
operating room and a small in
cision is made in her abdomen.
Dr. Fahning is handed a small
pipette containing the first egg
which he inserts in a small
puncture in an oviduct. The in
cision is closed and another
-.recipient arrives for a repeat
performance. In about 30 days
pregnancies can be diagnosed.
Full-term pregnancies should
result in six healthy “ful sibs”
Phone 717-354-5848
I arbiter Farming. Saturday April 28,1973
jx*xwx-:-x-:-:w^^
(brothers or sisters) with genetic
traits of the donor cow and bull
she was bred to. In only 9 months
this superior cow will have
produced 2.5 calves more than
her average expected lifetime
production. Yet her productive
life is just beginning.
ICBS is presently researching
techniques to freeze eggs for
long-term storage, much as
semen is frozen today. This would
allow cattlemen to “buy eggs”
from certain superior animals
much as they might purchase
superior live animals today.
Then, using still another process
under research, each egg might
be non-surgically ‘injected” into
the reproductive tract of an
average carrier cow to jield a
highly valuable animal.
These frozen eggs might
someday be flown to under
developed countries where the
simple implantation process
could yield greatly superior
animals using their own existing
stock as recipients. This would
mean rapid upgrading of both
beef and dairy to feed the hungry
of these depressed areas.
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