Beef Embryo Transfer Team

Three separate Hawke’s Bay businesses depend on each other’s meticulous teamwork to provide a full embryo transplant service for cattle.

The team is made up of vet Martin Hamer, Ian Brown who has the flushing service and a licensed quarantine centre at Pakipaki, Julie Baulke, the embryologist who helps when the cows are flushed and when the embryos are implanted, and the Nankervis family of Kerry and Linda and their daughter Jenna Cann, who supply and prepare the recipient cattle.

The three businesses have been working together for six years very successfully and have embryo transplant pregnancy rates that are well above the world average.

With the three businesses concentrating on their area of expertise the number of embryos collected and the subsequent pregnancy rates are significantly better than those that can be achieved on farm. This is due to the attention to detail throughout the process, which is not always present when the breeder is running a programme on his own farm.

Farmers who use this service want to get more calves on the ground from their most valuable cows. For example for a recent client, 28 cows were implanted resulting in 26 calves from only one collection of eggs, which is a very good result.

It’s a huge genetic gain which the breeders couldn’t make otherwise in only a year.

The difference between this and AI is that AI increases the number of offspring from a bull, while ET increases the number of offspring from a cow.

As a cow passes on more genetic traits than a bull, ET is an opportunity to obtain the best traits from both the cow and the bull, and to produce more calves from that cow than you can by natural breeding with only one calf a year.

There are a huge number of small details the whole team has to get right to be successful, and everyone’s approach has to be meticulous.

Ian and Karen Brown receive cows from all over the country for flushing. The cows are prepared and brought into season with a series of hormone injections, then AI’d. Seven days later the embryos are flushed by Martin, which takes 20 to 30 minutes per cow.

Embryologist Julie Baulke then sorts and grades the embryos using a microscope, and most are frozen straight away.

The cows are flushed throughout the year in a 28-day programme, and usually the embryos are frozen. Otherwise they are kept fresh and taken up to Kerry Nankervis’ property for transplanting into recipient crossbred heifers.

Frozen embryos are transplanted from late September through to the end of January, because farmers want the cows calving at the usual time with their other cows the following year.

Both Ian and Kerry are very good at managing cows, and there is no production stress on the animals. Ian doesn’t even have a dog to help move the cows.

Kerry buys the recipient cows at 18 to 24 months old and makes sure they are the right size, and ready to get in calf.

They synchronise them to come on heat at the right time. On an average farm 80% of cows synchronised come on heat, but almost all the animals the team synchronises come on heat.

The embryos are implanted a week after the cows come on heat, which is the same stage at which they were flushed out of the donor cow. Kerry has to keep a close watch on when the heifers begin cycling, including the time of day.

The day before the embryos are implanted, the recipients are checked to ensure they have a functional corpus luteum on their ovaries. If they don’t have it, they aren’t used. At the same time Martin marks which side it is on, and that’s the side they implant the embryo on a week later.

The majority of the embryos come from Ian Brown’s centre, but some are imported.

At Kerry and Linda’s 445ha farm at Sherenden, about 75% of their cattle business is focused on the recipient cows. They also have the Lynmar Angus Stud.

They buy in 700 rising two year heifers each year, mostly Hereford Friesian cross.

Most of the embryos being implanted are either Friesian or Angus, but they do the full range of breeds, having also worked on Wagyu and Speckle Park breeds.

Record keeping has to be very carefully done, and keeping the computer records is Jenna Cann’s job.

After the embryos are implanted, Martin pregnancy tests the heifers after 42 days. The heifers stay on the farm for 60 or 90 days after the ET operation – 60 days for the North Island clients, 90 days for the South Island clients.

It costs $1500 to buy a pregnant heifer carrying an embryo.