Choosing Embryo Recipient Cows/Heifers

[pcostx]

I am interested in finding a couple of cows/heifers to be used as embryo recipients.

I am new to cattle, how does one go about choosing the best stock to be recipient cows? What age is ideal? Are there ages I should avoid? What about breed? Any that are best or worst?

Thank you!

Deirdre
Red Oak, TX

 

[Air gator]

I have had 12 embryo calves in the last 16 months or so. The most fertile recips are heifers. The risk you have is that you don't know how they will do as mothers. I had to bottle feed a heifer out of a Holstein heifer recip. Personally, I would avoid fullbood Holstein heifers for sure. Cross bred dairy heifers are not as bad. I have used Brahma out of Holsteins and Brahmans out of Brown Swiss. (Brahman cross cows can have problems with their cervix which rules them out as recips because the tech can't pass the rod to implant the embryo). A lot of times breeders don't like calves out of first calf heifers. However, if you use a large frame recip and implant an embryo from a smaller breed you will get a really nice calf. I have heard that the ideal age for a recip is between 3 to 6 years of age. Believe it or not from my own personal experience you have a better window with embryo transfers than you have with A.I. The biggest thing you need to focus on is the experience of the person implanting the embryos. The more experience the better. Also, your recips need to be as fat as possible so do yourself a favor and wean the calves off if the recip has a calf. You also need to make sure that you inject the recips with Multimin before you implant the embryos. Depending on where you live your cows may be low on selenium and Multimin will fix that. Good Luck.

 

[WRFarms]

The best recipients are fertile and good milking. Fertility is hard to judge unless you have some background information. Generally the cows that calve earliest in the season among their peers are the most fertile. The cows that raise the heaviest calf are generally the best milking. Age and breed aren't as relevant as past performance. This is all very easy if you have that information. If you're not picking from your own stock, you need to find a local breeder and work directly with him to buy the animals you need. Someone with good records that you judge to be honest should be able to sell you the kind of cow you need, but it won't be cheap.

When you're going into it totally blind, you're better off to make an arrangement with a good nearby commercial operation to act as a multiplier herd for you. You would pay the cost of implanting his cows that meet your criteria and then you would buy the resulting ET calves from him at fair market prices + a premium, typically around $150/head. To clarify, you would be paying the calf's value in lbs and not its perceived value as an ET calf. Some years this will cost you more and some years it will save you money, but overall it reduces risk.

The last thing I would do is go out and buy unknown cattle to be recipients for embryo's that cost half as much as the cow did. I wouldn't use a milk cow for a beef calf, or the other way around. It adds unnecessary complication into judging the calf and reduces the calf's value both to yourself and to a knowledgeable buyer. It depends on your goals though and there are lots of ways to boost a calf's performance and EPDs beyond its own quality. I wouldn't use a heifer either, even though they can often perform as well as a cow it still adds an unnecessary degree of uncertainty that you don't want anywhere near a valuable embryo.

EDIT: I'd like to add to my comment about ET calves out of a different breed recipient cow. The various breed associations group ET calves into contemporary groups based on their surrogate's breed. You'll have more accurate EPDs if you use a same breed recipient and you'll have less regression towards mean values. Staying within beef breeds for beef calves and within dairy breeds for dairy calves will add the least uncertainty. This is most relevant to you if you intend to use EPDs at all or have buyers that do, but it's still relevant to the average breeder so far as the uncertainty over the ET calf's individual performance is concerned.

 

[Jessica06]

I have had 12 embryo calves in the last 16 months or so. The most fertile recips are heifers. The risk you have is that you don't know how they will do as mothers. I had to bottle feed a heifer out of a Holstein heifer recip. Personally, I would avoid fullbood Holstein heifers for sure. Cross bred dairy heifers are not as bad. I have used Brahma out of Holsteins and Brahmans out of Brown Swiss. (Brahman cross cows can have problems with their cervix which rules them out as recips because the tech can't pass the rod to implant the embryo). A lot of times breeders don't like calves out of first calf heifers. However, if you use a large frame recip and implant an embryo from a smaller breed you will get a really nice calf. I have heard that the ideal age for a recip is between 3 to 6 years of age. Believe it or not from my own personal experience you have a better window with embryo transfers than you have with A.I. The biggest thing you need to focus on is the experience of the person implanting the embryos. The more experience the better. Also, your recips need to be as fat as possible so do yourself a favor and wean the calves off if the recip has a calf. You also need to make sure that you inject the recips with Multimin before you implant the embryos. Depending on where you live your cows may be low on selenium and Multimin will fix that. Good Luck.

Are you referring to F1 Brahmans or Brahman influenced females?

 

[Jessica06]

Buy cows that are suited to your area, *have really good temperaments*, and have had their tracts examined. Ideally, they've been AI'd successfully before, or have at least had a gun passed through their cervix. If you want to go a step further, especially if you are using them for high dollar embryos, you might also have blood work done to check for PI, leukosis, etc... You can make it as complicated as you want - bare minimum or all the bells and whistles. Personally, I would select on temperament first, and then go down the list of priorities from there.

 

[Air gator]

F1. A Brahman bull out of a dairy cow. Another consideration for heifers is to make sure that you don't get freemartins.
I found that when I was unable to insert a CIDR, then the heifer turned out to be a freemartin.

 

[Jessica06]

We helped put CIDRs in at a friend's place several years ago. Had 1 heifer in about 100 that we just could not get a cidr into. I wasn't good enough to palpate tracts then, but it never occurred to me at the time that it could have been a freemartin. I think that probably explains it, though!

 

[WRFarms]

We helped put CIDRs in at a friend's place several years ago. Had 1 heifer in about 100 that we just could not get a cidr into. I wasn't good enough to palpate tracts then, but it never occurred to me at the time that it could have been a freemartin. I think that probably explains it, though!

I had one this year that I couldn't get the CIDR in. It was like hitting a wall and I was always taught that meant she was a freemartin or she was twisted up inside. I'm ashamed to say I never even thought to palpate her and immediately went to assuming she was a freemartin. I ended up calling out my vet and asking him to check her out. To my embarrassment it turned out to be an extra thick hymen. The vet used a fair bit of force to get the applicator in. It was too late for the CIDR though and she didn't get one, but she still came in heat and bred AI, so it all worked out.

I learned a lesson and hopefully I'll remember it next time this happens. I'm no expert at palpation, but I can find the cervix and I'm sure I can learn to do the rest.