A two-seat folding top surrey, one carriage consignment sale held by of the carriages offered at the annual Paul Z. Martin, Gordonville. Transplant Calf (Continued from Race 1| coat resembling a bleached- in {£ out Hereford. Conrad feels this is the breed that’s going to become a dominant factor S^rp? 1 breeding stock m in the business because of ,'•,. .... mnt ... superior growth rate, «'*», is a tremendous boost in marbling and milking ability. He pointed out that in 9°?fad ® the last two International Livestock Expositions at Chicago, grand champion “S e ribbons went to Simmentals J^^5 ar 'j^ ld n th^ both years. are probably only a few There are precious few “f* purebred Simmentals in the U.S., and virtually all of breeders like Conrad are those are females The especially interested in American Simmental n^TL°iq Association considers a ' seven-eighths female purebred, but a bull must be a year fifteen-sixteenths before it m^ ead °t i us * : °? e * , can join the purebred ranks Agrowing number of firms. Strict laws against the im- imhim portation of foreign animals £™jL arfiS keeps purebred European The transplants bulbs out of the U.S., but mu !f presently be done there are some purebreds in ®wSh if Canada. Semen from these ~ aras's FARM * We Can’t Get Our Hands Out of The Soil Either! W *>. v vv donor cow, whose calves should be potentially valuable enough to Justify the cost of the operation. Her heat cycle is timed ac curately, and synchronized with a group of potential recipient cows. Exactly five days before the donor cow is expected-to ovulate, a fer tility drug, such as pregnant mare serum, is ad ministered. This drug causes the donor to super-ovulate, releasing as many as a dozen eggs,-rather than the usual one. When the cow comes into heat on the fifth day, she is artificially inseminated with semen from a superior bull. Five days after that she, along with a dozen or so donors, are prepared for surgery. In the antiseptic operating room, the donors reproductive organs are exposed and slit open, and the fertilized dggs are flushed out of the cow and into a ceramic dish. The eggs, which are actually not eggs anymore since cellular division has begun, are examined by microsqppc to determine their suitability for transplanting. Those which are suitable are then placed surgically into a recipient cow. This 411 W. ROSEVILLE RD., LANCASTER PH. 393:3921 VI Although she doesn't know it, this three-quarter Simmental cow is mother to the calf by her side. The calf is the product of an egg which had been fertilized in the’'mother’s body. After fertilization, the egg was recipient, which was a Jersey in Conrad’s instance, then bears the fertilized egg for a full term' pregnancy. If the operation is entirely successful, there will be as many as a dozen live births of genetically superior animals. These calves will have all the genetic material of the AI buu and the donor mother, but none of the genes of the recipient cow which actually gave birth to the animal. The recipient mother serves only as an incubator for the last nine months and ten days of the calf’s pre-natal existence. The operation’s price keeps it out of the ballpark for the average cow-calf or dairy operation, but breeders of top-flight animals are seriously in terested. One firm, In ternational Cryo-Biological Service, Inc., of Min neapolis, said that they have booked 60 percent of (heir * CREDIT At Farm Credit we know people who wouldn’t give up farming for anything. They farm part time, and hold down a city job too. We make loans to these people, the same as we do to full-' time farmers. Loans on anything to make farming easier, and pay better. Our interest rates are the lowest possible, our terms the longest around, and we’ll go out of our way to help you. You see, we know how farming can get in your blood. Because we grew up on farms ourselves. AGWAY BUILDING. LEBANON.’ PH. 273-4506 Lancartar Farming, Saturday, May 25 ,1974— 1973 capacity of 200 operations. As this and other firms gain more experience with transfer techniques, costs are expected to come down. Transfer won’t likely become a viable tool for commercial dairy or beef fanners until non-surgical techniques are perfected both for the removal of fertilized eggs and their implantation in donor cows. Another technique that’s being worked on is the storage of fertilized eggs. If this were perfected, it would . eliminate the need for estrus synchronization. Is there much risk to the life of a prize cow that un dergoes the transplant operation? “The real risk isn’t to the cow,” Conrad said, “it’s financial. You first of all don’t know how many fertilized eggs you’re going to get from a donor cow. You could get none and you could get 20. No matter FARM CREDIT We’re your kind of people. removed and placed in the uterus of a Jersey, which actually bore the calf for nine months and 10 days. Both animals are owned by Dr. Thomas Conrad. Bird-in-Hand. how many you get. It still costs $lO,OOO. Right now, embryo transplants aren’t really a money-making proposition, at least not always. I do know a man in the midwest who put a prize cow through the operation and had 10 pregnant recipient cows. He sold the recipients and the donor cow for $161,000, with an in surance policy guaranteeing live births and six months of age. I think he made a good investment.” ICBS, the Minneapolis firm mentioned earlier, says its success so far has been 3.7 live births for each operation. Conrad said he has no financial interest in embryo transplants, and that his real business is raising purebred Simmentals. He added that he’d be glad to discuss the technique, though, with anyone who might be in terested. 25
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