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CATTLE
Revival in Embryo
Embryo transfer calf Bradden
Delsons Delight with surrogate
mother, belonging to Messrs
Oliver and du Bern of Brook Farm,
Cornhill who also have three
other embryo transfer calves plus
another five pregnancies.
In summer 2009, RBST acquired two Northern Dairy
Shorthorn cattle under the Agisted Stock Scheme. The
purpose of the acquisition was to enable the cow and
heifer to be used in an embryo transfer project that forms
part of an RBST-funded breed support programme for the
breed. Twelve months on we take a look at the project
and how it relates to the mission to revive the numbers of
one of the UK’s rarest native cattle breeds.
In 1944, the first Northern Dairy
Shorthorn (NDS) herdbook contained
pedigree entries of 10,000 females and
1,000 bulls all then living. By 2007, the
special section of the Coates’s Herd Book
(Dairy Shorthorn) which now shows NDS
registrations recorded only 55 females.
Nearly all of these could be found in just five
herds, three in the north of England and two
in the south.
With the situation so critical, RBST
agreed with breeders to fund the five-year
programme with the aim being to increase
NDS numbers and secure the breed’s future.
The broad strategy of the programme is to:
- Set up new herds and spread them over
a wider geographical area.
- Identify and try to ensure that as many
as possible pure NDS females as
possible are bred from.
- Manage herds to produce one calf per
28
cow annually.
- Collect and store semen from three
additional bulls.
- Use as many young bulls as possible
with a broad range of genetic variety
for between one and three years.
- Collect current and historic data to
evaluate the breed in terms of both milk
and meat production and the inputs
needed for such production.
One key issue at the outset of the
programme was that the geographical
concentration increased the vulnerability
of the breed to major outbreaks of
diseases such as TB or FMD. Veterinary
surgeon Charles Castle of the Beech
House Veterinary Surgery in Towcester
is co-ordinating the embryo transfer
programme and became personally
involved in the breed in 2007. He says:
“I wanted to keep some animals of my own
and after some consideration I decided
on the NDS which is a breed I was familiar
with from my boyhood in Yorkshire. I
realised that numbers were at a critical
level, but there were still sufficient for the
breed to be viable long-term. However,
one of the factors I felt posed the greatest
threat was the geographical issue.
Looking at bloodlines, it was also apparent
that most of the NDS families were
concentrated in only one or two herds,
most in just one herd.”
Within the context of the breeding
programme, it was agreed that an embryo
transfer project could give nature a helping
hand by accelerating the numbers of calves
produced. Such an increase would more
easily facilitate the wider disposition of
animals and help reduce risk from disease
outbreak.
A number of breeders agreed to
participate in the embryo transfer project,
which is part-RBST and part-privately
funded. Under its Agisted Stock
Programme, RBST acquired a cow and
heifer representing two different bloodlines
from Geoff and Sandra Dixon’s Rushylea
herd to be used for the embryo transfer
part of the programme. Also used in the
first year of the project were a further seven
breeder-owned cows and heifers.
Twelve months on, some of the results
of the pilot year are happily grazing in
the Midlands, further calvings are eagerly