The Rural Voice, 1989-04, Page 26hasn't succeeded with oocytes from
younger foetuses.
"We just don't know enough to
keep them going at that point," he
says.
He intends to try operating on new-
born calves soon, removing one ovary
and its oocytes and leaving the other.
"That way farmers could enjoy the
best of both worlds. Cows can get
along fine with only one ovary, so
farmers can keep those calves and put
them into their herd in the normal
way. And we should be able to re-
cover thousands of oocytes from the
ovary we remove at birth and develop
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of embryos
and cattle from that."
So, soon after the calf matures into
a milking cow, the oocytes taken at
her birth will have grown to be other
cows and bulls. This means that
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24 THE RURAL VOICE
farmers will be able to assess her
genetic worth as a mother far sooner
than is possible today. If she's a loser,
she and her oocytes can be culled
immediately. If she's a winner, both
her oocytes and her own reproductive
system can be put to full use, multi-
plying her benefits for thousands more
farmers.
"The way things are now, by the
time we have enough data from the
daughters of bulls to know which ones
are winners and which ones should be
culled, the mothers of those bulls are
old cows well past their peak," Stub-
bings says. That means they have lost
many of their oocytes and haven't got
much time to produce more offspring
through conventional techniques.
Stubbings' advances are so new
that he doesn't know how they will be
accepted and applied by farmers.
"Farmers like to look at a calf to
judge what they've got from a mating.
And they like to compare results
through several generations — to look
at her against her dam and grand -
dam."
"What I'm doing here is a totally
new thing, taking oocytes from a
foetus and developing a generation of
cattle from an animal they'll never
see. I don't know how that will go
over."
But no matter how the news is
received in Canada, Stubbings is
certain that the research and technol-
ogy will be pursued somewhere in the
world. And those who are swift and
wise in applying technology will hold
the lead in world markets.
"No matter what our farmers
decide to do, or not to do, with these
new technologies, Canada should
make a commitment to hang in there
with this research," he says.
"The Japanese and the Europeans
are into this in a very big way. We're
right in there now, but if we should
ever fall five years behind, we'll never
catch up again."0