What is New England Genetics and who is involved?

New England Genetics is an embryo transfer company certified by the American Embryo Transfer Association (AETA). We provide on farm ET services throughout New England and in northern New York. 98% of our business is dairy with Holsteins making up over 90%, followed by Jerseys and Swiss. New England Genetics also provides custom embryo shipments worldwide. Dr. Richard Whitaker (Whit) has been doing embryo transfer for over 25 years. He formed New England Genetics in 1987 and hired Julie Wilson Martin as a part time assistant. Julie has been with the company ever since and handles all of our embryo shipments, health documents, and donor scheduling. Jonica Martin has been with the company for five years. As an embryologist, Jonica is Whit’s on the farm partner. She also handles all of the ET paperwork for breed registration, maintains supplies and inventory. Dr. Karen Murphy and Nate Cossaboom joined the team in 2007. Karen graduated from Purdue Veterinary School in 1994 and worked in bovine veterinary medicine in both Maine and VT before joining NEG in July 2007. Karen is proficient with the ultrasound and has recently become certified as an embryo transfer veterinarian. Nate Cossaboom is a veteran AI and ET technician. He has over 20 years of experience breeding cows for GENEX and has been successfully transferring embryos for the past 10 years. Nate enables NEG to offer transfer services 7 days a week. It’s a great team.

How do results compare between heifers, young cows and older cows?

Heifers are consistently unpredictable in both fertilization rate and superovulatory response. Our average number of fertile embryos for heifers is 3.2 per flush. Regarding cows, superovulatory response is consistent through a cow’s reproductive life. However, fertility drops with age. This is not that significant in animals under 8 years old, but after that it drops noticeably. For animals over 12 this drop in fertility is very significant. Please note that the above statements are generalizations. Donors are individuals and may work well for many years. We’ve recovered 12 beautiful embryos from an 18 year old Jersey.

Everyone recognizes that some cows and cow families flush much more successfully than others. Just how big a role does this play?

It is significant. Superovulatory response is heritable to a large degree and animals from the same family line tend to respond similarly. But as you might imagine, this is “predictability” is diluted as you get further from the source. For example: It is reasonable to assume that a daughter of a great flush cow would respond similarly, but making similar assumptions about a great great granddaughter would be fantasy. And remember that there are two factors that must align for a super flush cow. She must superovulate well AND she must be able to fertilize that large batch of eggs. There are a lot of cows that can make 20 eggs, but far fewer make 20 embryos.

Would you describe an "ideal" candidate for ET (age, stage of lactation, condition, etc)?

As I said before, all cows are individuals, but I’ll step out on this limb and pick the 3-7 year old cow, in a positive energy balance (>100 DIM). Now I’ll explain my answer. Some 2 year olds work extremely well, but we’re already asking them to do a lot: continue to grow, make a good record, classify well, and reproduce. Some really great flush cows don’t manage to pull all of that together as 2 year olds. And after 7 years we begin to see the decreasing fertility that I mentioned above.

What are some of the most critical outside factors (like weather) that affect flush success?

Management and Environment are huge factors. This is true for donors AND recipients. In my opinion it is unreasonable to call them outside factors, because they ARE the factors. All I do as an ET practitioner is manage the process of ET. Meanwhile the client is managing the cow—from nutrition to housing, comfort, heat detection, AI timing, etc. Here are some general ideas. Get rid of the stress. No pain (sore feet), good air, no overcrowding. Nutrition is huge: cows need to be on a well balanced diet with adequate minerals in a palatable form. We are all aware of heat stress and its ability to shut down reproduction. I’ve seen this happen in prolonged very cold winters as well. Don’t forget about photoperiod. Some cows do better under professional management…in a dedicated donor barn. That’s not because the breeders don’t have the skills to manage their cow. Most often taking care of the donor cow doesn’t fit well with their operation. Square peg, round hole syndrome.

What are some common mistakes made by breeders that lower their success?

HEAT DETECTION! HEAT DETECTION! HEAT DETECTION! And I have two other pet peeves. Clients taking the advice of their long lost neighbor who flushed a cow 12 years ago with no pregnancies rather than picking up the phone and calling us for our opinion. We do this all the time. Julie’s in the office waiting for the call! My second twist is clients skimping on semen. Consider this: I did a lot of ET work in the Maritime Provinces of Canada when Ronnybrook Prelude was popular. We averaged one more fertile embryo per flush and more #1 embryos from Prelude flushes. That’s because he was a very fertile bull! Even with less fertile bulls, we can approximate the “Prelude” effect by using more semen. Clients have already committed to significant expense when they decide to flush a cow. The bull contributes half the genetics, so doesn’t it make sense to spend as much on the semen as you did on the cow? OK, OK…can you at least use 4 units? Oh yea, did I mention HEAT DETECTION?

What advice would you give to someone who is starting an ET program in their herd?

Go to the AETA website: http://www.aeta.org/ ,get a list of AETA certified practitioners in your area, call them up and interview them, asking their advice to this question. Pick the one that works for you and keep asking questions. And remember, the MOST expensive part of an ET program is the open recipient pool.

How do you view the future of ET in the dairy business? Will it ever be applied in commercial dairies?

ET has a very bright future, especially in commercial settings. The application of ET technology is about 50 years behind AI. Does anyone remember when veterinarians were the only ones breeding cows by artificial insemination? The development of direct thaw embryos in the early 90’s allows the non-surgical transfer of an embryo directly out of a semen tank. No microscope, no expensive veterinarian required. If you’ve got enough “arm experience”, you can learn to do it yourself! And get this: we get a higher pregnancy rate on frozen thawed embryos using natural heats. Think about it.

How do you see the future of newer technologies such as cloning, gene mapping, sexed semen, in vitro fertilization, etc?

The operative word is “new.” At one time AI and ET were considered “new” technologies. All of these technologies have a future. It appears that these applications are appropriate for a narrower group of genetic donors. AI is appropriate for a large number of cattle. ET is appropriate for no more than 10% of the AI group, etc. IVF and Cloning promise less expensive production of embryos, but pregnancy rates and calving problems presently make them costlier on a per heifer calf basis. Not if, but WHEN those problems are addressed, then IVF and cloning will likely increase. I’m reluctant to embrace the value proposition in the narrowing genetic pool cloning will offer…but that’s just me. Gene mapping offers a great tool to associate desirable traits with specific genes. That holds true as long as we’re sure about what traits are desirable. Remember the early 90’s? “Who needs fat? All we want is protein.” That worked really well didn’t it? I’ve saved sexed semen for last. This holds a lot of promise. We continue to see incremental improvement in production speed and fertility. Assuming that trend continues, then we could see a maximum sex skew to about 65% heifers in the total population (assumes 50% of the entire population is breedable (25% are too young to breed, and 25% are culls), and assume that only heifers (25%) are bred with 85% sexed semen, remaining 25% cows bred conventional AI). So what happens to the price of replacement cattle?