Reproduction Technologies in Agriculture
okay everybody this is the last evening I'm just gonna turn on my video here this is the last evening for our educational virtual animal science sessions for this year we've been really pleased and grateful that you've all been able to attend the sessions we've had this year we've had beef carcass evaluation we had and we have this session tonight that's going to end our end our group for this year so just a couple of things here related to kind of housekeeping I'm just gonna show a PowerPoint presentation for you all we are going to entertain questions this evening by looking at the bottom of your screen there will be a q a box so if you've got any questions for myself Dr Nate or Todd Taylor who's also on this evening please feel free to put it in the question the Q a box that's the best way for me to kind of keep them organized Todd and I are going to be managing the questions on the on the back side while Dr Nate is giving a presentation for you guys tonight a couple of things looking forward to a great evening but it all starts with great listening and learning um and leaving the chat alone and keeping your questions in the the Q a portion for this evening it's a different type of system a zoom webinar then maybe you're you're used to like through school you're not going to be able to see others tonight and and so you any questions or interactions that you want to do with the speakers or myself please go ahead and do that through the question and answer section okay the next slide is many of you I know are interested in receiving Educational Credit for this evening in order to show exhibit sell at your county or local community fairs so if you're interested or needing that type of Educational Credit there's a form here it was in the email you received so if you want to make some notes tonight and put that on this form you can go to the the form link that is in the Q a for everyone to see you can click on that and at the bottom of the page is a is a verification form link that you can print this form out and send it to your local County Fair organizational and leadership group okay if you are interested in keeping up with what's going on with you youth Livestock in Wisconsin these are a number of links in social media and lots of ways to keep active with what's going on educationally through the Wisconsin youth livestock program there's two links to to two different websites to keep you abreast of what's going on the YouTube channel is very important all of the many years that we have done this virtual programming is available all the videos are available at the YouTube channel and this evening's recording will be available there as well after a few days after tonight's session you will find it there and if you've registered obviously you did if you're here tonight you will get an email that illustrates when that recording is ready to be to be viewed because I know many could not make it tonight and and we'll be viewing it viewing 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technology so I'm gonna to share his PowerPoint presentation and then quickly give a little introduction of Dr Nate so Dr Nate is a veterinarian up in the middle part of the state he'll give quite a bit of his background but I wanted to share out that he's been doing a lot of work and kind of this is his gig right this reproduction area of of animals and he started his work in the dairy world and he's moved into lots of other species since then and so we wanted to bring him on to talk about all the neat ways that we have grown in the reproduction area in terms of technology that is available to us to be able to really genetically select right the superior and high quality livestock that we are looking for across all species from dairy to beef to sheep to to swine and and even goats is become a part of Dr Nate's practice so we're pleased that he's here Todd Taylor who is the Sheep unit manager at UW Madison who utilizes Dr Nate quite often is here to support the the presentation tonight as as we have done a lot of that type of work this type of work at the UW sheep unit station so with that I'm going to pass it over to Dr Nate again Nate thanks for being with us tonight yes uh thank you Bernie uh can you guys hear me okay yes all right super um yes well thank you I'm very pleased to be here and talk with all of you a little bit about uh small ruminant uh in particular sheep Advanced reproduction um so I'm gonna just uh tell you a little bit about myself my background first if we go to the next slide um but I received my doctor of veterinary medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006. uh so I've been practicing for about 15 years and like Bernie mentioned uh initially um I mean actually initially I was a general practitioner I did all farm animals general surgery and medicine but ultimately uh kind of kind of focused my work on Advanced reproduction in Dairy and beef cattle and over the years as that all grew um there's been a lot of things that have happened so um in we we not only house donors uh Dairy and beef cattle up to about 160 cattle here at a farm um just down the road uh from our office um but we've also developed our own internal uh IVF laboratory and we're going to talk a little bit about IVF down the road um but a big part of my passion has been uh developing emerging embryo export markets all around the world so exporting embryos all around the world I sit on uh a number of committees that work with the U.S government to help develop these markets um and it's really been quite interesting because I'll just say that although Dairy and beef have had a lot of interest in in exports I'm starting to get a lot of inquiries from countries we work with about small ruminant embryos as well so I I'm pretty excited about the future and I think in the next 10 years or so um we might be exporting a lot of sheep and goat embryos all around the world as well so uh but we specialize in conventional flushing as well as ovum pickup and I'll talk to you about these Technologies a little bit later but ovum pick up for in vitro fertilization um and like I said we have our own in-house IVF lab so um going to the next slide here um so we're going to talk a little bit about lap AI so laparoscopic artificial insemination in sheep and goats and then at the end of this I think Bernie's going to play um a video of us actually doing this live uh last weekend uh we're going to talk a little bit about surgical embryo collection uh as well as uh how we would transfer embryos and cryo preserve them or freeze them for later use I'll show you some pictures of of some embryos and we'll talk a little bit about stages and grades and then I think the really exciting part about this presentation and this does get a little a little bit high level here but laparoscopic ovum pickup and in vitro embryo production and this really is going to be the future uh for sheep and goat uh producers uh throughout the country and then finally why we do what we do so that's the uh what I'd like to talk about here with you guys today and we can go ahead to the next slide so laparoscopic AI um why we need to do laparoscopic artificial insemination in small ruminants is because of course of their size they're too small for us to uh manipulate uh per rectum to pass the cervix um additionally sheep and goats have notoriously very uh very difficult cervixes to pass they're they're very difficult to pass an AI insemination rod and and inseminate them uh transcervically so passing the cervix right so this method was developed this laparoscopic AI method was developed and is highly effective and you can see me here doing this procedure we will sedate the U and put them in a cradle and many of you may be familiar with this process already who put them in a cradle and tip them up so that all of their internal organs and their their intestines and their rumen will will fall down away from uh their reproductive tract we will then inflate their abdomen with some carbon dioxide basically just to give us a little room to see what we're doing and and then we'll go ahead and and put these trocars in which you can see in this picture here put a couple of trocars which are basically just a a Gateway or a window into the abdomen and um through one of the troll cars you'll see I have a laparoscope which will allow me to visualize what what is inside the abdomen and then through the other uh trocar we will place the insemination Rod um and I think you'll see this in the video later but the insemination Rod has a needle at the at the very end of it and a semen straw so a straw of Frozen or or fresh semen um loaded into that gun and I will go ahead and basically stab uh that needle into each uh side of the uterine horn and inject the um the semen into each uterine horn so you see on the right here this is a picture of what I'm looking at this is the uterine horns um of of a u that's showing very a very great esterus here she's she's in good heat very good heat got lots of tone and edema this is exactly what I want to see when I get in um to visualize the uterus so that they're toned up they're red they're edematous it's standing right up looking at me and that's that's this is a we code these uh from one to three this is a a three as far as um a quality of the the heat that she's showing so um so this is just a little bit about the lamp AI procedure and I did want to spend a little more time on this because um you know this is the the gateway to all of our Advanced reproduction that we are going to be doing in small ruminants um so to talk a little bit about um you know the the highlights of this procedure and I did mention it's easier to pass um uh the convoluted cervical rings and small ruminants so there's that but then also we can directly deposit the semen into the uterus if it's a poor quality semen sample we're going to achieve higher pregnancy rates from that semen uh it's also it's also just a very efficient use of processed semen if we need to we can even split those straws of semen between multiple U's and just really optimize the use of uh every single ejaculate from a ram um ultimately we can achieve higher pregnancy rates and more efficient use of um of that Rams ejaculate we'll go on to the next slide now um and I do just want to mention that it really is a team effort um when we're doing these in the field and I have my whole team there working we're cranking these out every probably 90 seconds to to two minutes um just a very efficient process we all have our roles and uh we have a team that's sedating uh getting them up on the the cradles clipping and scrubbing and prepping them um blocking the surgical sites I have somebody thawing semen for me and handing it to me and literally I'm just sitting on my stool uh and just uh you know inserting the troll cars and and inseminating the use and we can do hundreds of these in a day uh pretty efficiently so I just I really do want to acknowledge that it really is a team effort um and uh very appreciative of the great team that I have here at Generations so we'll go ahead to the next slide now and um so now I want to just kind of shift gears a little bit and talk about Embryo transfer so um the advantages of embryo transfer are that we can basically have more offspring per donor per year also it helps us to really Drive genetic progress and the two primary ways that that's happening is through selection intensity and generation intervals now selection intensity you can just think of this very simply as if you have a herd of a hundred or a flock excuse me of a hundred use if you pick the top u in your flock to propagate her genetics that is selection intensity instead of um you know breeding all of them maybe you just take the very top you and propagate her genetic line so that's a very high level of selection intensity generation interval is uh the time frame from uh the birth of an offspring until she herself becomes a donor and if we can decrease that time frame we are going to amplify the rate of genetic progress um so I did just want to mention those couple of key uh genetic uh you know progress parameters that are really important and actually sheep sheep and goats alike and kind of have an advantage as far as they have a shorter gestation interval to begin with so this is something that can really uh really intensify the rate of genetic progress Within These breeds and species um so I'm not going to talk too much about merchandising or exports or biosecurity I did mention I think it's going to be um some huge potential down the road as far as a revenue Source uh but that's something that'll be coming here in the next 10 years I do want to mention adaptability though so embryos acquire passive immunity from their recipient donors so if we were to take an embryo from a farm in Wisconsin and transfer it into a recipient in California they might have different diseases or pathogens on their Farm different bacteria or viruses that are threats um and if we were just to take a sheep and haul it across the country and unload it at a farm in California it might struggle it might struggle to survive when it gets hit with some uh bacteria or virus it has not seen before but with an embryo because it's born from the you that's within that flock she she will be conferred um some passive immunity from that recipient that will protect her so this this is a really important concept that gives Embryo transfer just a huge Edge as far as biosecurity and adaptability and it holds true not only from flock to flock from state to state but also country to Country if we're exporting embryos um so this is a really important concept as far as providing immunity you know to to Native pathogens that might exist on any given flock or in any given country okay moving on can you just quickly say uh Nate Dr Nate sorry to interrupt but can you just talk a little bit about Embryo transfer and you know like in the cattle World Dairy and beef we've been doing this for a long time as you know per your picture there um can you just talk a little bit about like differences in species in in some in especially as it relates to this Embryo transfer and other AI Technologies yeah absolutely no thank you Bernie that's a great point and um so yeah and I so you can see here in these pictures um the picture in the upper right is um how we used to do this procedure in the 70s um we would put donor cows under general anesthesia okay so they were intubated and they were under gas anesthesia for this procedure we it was a surgical procedure you could see the surgeons have they're draped in they are surgically um collecting these embryos you know their their exteriorizing the uterus and you can see in the picture on the upper left we have the tip of the uterine horn and the ovary uh this is actually an ovary that has been super stimulated and each of those little red nodules is a CL a corpus luteum each representing one ovulation and one potential embryo that could be recovered uh and and so here they are surgically flushing you can maybe just vaguely see uh a tomcat catheter coming out of the uterine the tip of the uterine horn and into this little petri dish they're holding and they're flushing the uterine horn so this is where the embryos are seven days old they're in the uterine horn and they're flushing those out so this is a in Vivo collection in Vivo Vivo meaning in within the body okay so the donor is incubating those embryos she was inseminated and she incubated those embryos for seven days and now we're flushing them out this is how the process used to be done uh up until you know I would say the uh the late 70s when actually at our own University of Wisconsin-Madison Dr Bob Rowe um helped to innovate and discover a non-surgical method to flush donors um interestingly using a human urinary catheter we can do this non-surgically of course it's far less expensive far less invasive much much safer for the donor and much faster so that all of that brought the price point way down and made this technology far more accessible for all of our producers um so so this is it's good historical content to understand this is where we came from and it was only you know 30 40 years ago and and look where we've come so uh We've really Advanced quite a long ways now having said all that in small ruminance and I'm sorry maybe I'm diverging here a little bit but having said all that with small ruminants we cannot again you know manipulate the cervix and the uterine horns per rectum obviously they're they're very small right so so so we are still surgically collecting uh sheep and goats uh by this same method um but I'm going to talk a little later about what the future of of that industry will be so is it is that what you were kind of hoping for Bernie yes that was great yep very good very good so I Advanced your side for you awesome so we'll move on so Nate one question did come in you can answer this later if you want but there was a question about what you charge to inseminate use and I'm assuming on a probably on a per head basis so I don't know if you want to touch on that later just yeah yeah I can and I can send out our price list and some information about us um it really kind of depends on the volume if we're doing one or we're doing a hundred you know um but uh but yeah we can talk about that later for sure so um so so like I said now we are still with small ruminants because they are so small we have to do this surgically so these are some great pictures here of us uh here my team at generations and this is this is us doing these surgical collections um you can see I'll just say down the bottom left there's a diagram of this human urinary catheter and how it works with um with cattle you know we'll pass that through the cervix and it's got a balloon that we can inflate and that balloon that we inflate it's two things it holds the Foley catheter in place you know it holds it in one spot but it also will isolate one uterine horn to be flushed so um you can see beyond the balloon there's the tip of the catheter that has ports in it and we will then uh flush media in through those ports and isolate that right horn flush media in massage it around and then flush it back out uh and once it comes back out we send it down um there's a Y connector Junction where there's an inflow and an outflow so we we go inflow we flush we massage and then it comes back out and we send it down the outflow and it goes travels to it and I don't have a good picture of this but travels to a filter and that filter will filter out any of the embryos and we can search for those under the microscope so this is the Foley catheter method of flushing donors we in essence use this same method uh with sheep and ghosts but we still have to exteriorize the uterus so um and I think I have a better picture of this later um but the middle picture you can see I'm actually suturing up both sites where we placed um the Foley catheter and the flushy torn so I'm just kind of suturing up the uterus here in the middle picture and then on the picture on the right we have another um really nice ovary that's been super ovulated and you can see lots of Corpus luteums or CLS there and I believe this donor she I believe she gave us it was around 17 I think it was 17 nice embryos from this donor that's just one ovary that we have exterior eyes so um but uh so those are just some pictures I'm not gonna get in to the details of how we do this other than to just say that um you definitely need to be fairly skilled surgically um and then also you really need to know what you're doing when it comes to embryo evaluation how to handle embryos and how to freeze them um so this is uh this is something that takes a little time to develop and get get proficient at so if we go on to the surgical embryo collection slide you can see here I think yeah okay so um well it's actually a goad up on the left that we were doing um in the middle picture you can see both the both uterine horns and uh the ovary one of the ovaries that has CLS on it um so that's a nice picture there and then on the right this is the actual process of how we do this you can see um we are literally injecting a syringe full of flush media through the distal tip the very the very end of the uterine horn and then we have the Foley catheter is coming out here towards the base so you can almost you can almost even appreciate a little bit of a bulge there where the Foley catheter is uh inflated at the base of the uterine horn kind of holding it in place and just flushing that one side um so we're injecting the syringe it's going through the entire uterus and then flowing out the fully and being collected in that um that conical uh clear conical vial that uh my assistant with the purple glove is holding um so that that's the process in a nutshell literally flushing I mean it is what it sounds like we're flushing the uterus out uh and we hope we're going to collect those those embryos at the end so embryo classification um and we're not going to talk too much about this um if anybody is interested in learning more about embryology come talk to me later send me an email uh you can come do a ride along with us and uh this is what we're passionate about this is what we're really good at is embryology um this is really the the fun part of our our business so um I'm just gonna say that the international embryo technology Society has set standards for us to try to you know become standardized as an industry as far as how we stage their development and and also how we grade uh their quality but that's all we really need to say about embryo classification for this uh presentation and uh then the next slide is more of the same um again we're just talking about the quality um and this might maybe more of a bovine slide I would say actually with with small ruminants grade one embryos I mean we can hit 70 80 percent all day long uh so these numbers are probably a little a little bit low um small ruminants do tend to be uh fairly uh fertile when it comes to pregnancy rates um so uh so yeah that's all we need to say there and then um on the transfer of fresh embryos um there are a number of methods to transfer embryos into a recipient um you can kind of do a method like I showed you with the laparoscopic AI where again you're kind of stabbing with a needle into the uterine horn and injecting it kind of like a straw semen um for us personally uh and then there's a completely surgical method but for us personally we really like the hybrid method um it's kind of hard to explain but it's a little bit of both we do exteriorize the uterine horn and we'll use a tomcat catheter to inject the embryo into the uterus but um we feel it gives us the best pregnancy rates and we're really happy with that method um the only other real important thing I would say is um and again I know you guys are all at different levels as far as your understanding on this so but you should know this is something you should know that the corpus luteum or the CL is what secretes the hormone progesterone okay progesterone Pro gestate progesterone it's for pregnancy okay and so that CL is what maintains pregnancy so when I'm looking for that structure on the ovary I need to place the embryo on the same side as the corpus luteum we have two uterine horns we have a left and a right uterine horn and I need to find the corpus luteum identify that structure the embryo needs to be transferred on the same side as the corpus luteum so that's an important Point uh hormonally physiologically um it's same with humans all mammals um so a really fundamental point right there um that that's a big part of what we do when we're transferring embryos identify the CL transfer the embryo onto that same side sounds simple enough right Okay so cryopreservation or we commonly call it freezing um we can freeze embryos for later transfer uh we do this with a controlled rate freezer it's a machine uh does a really nice job and we use liquid nitrogen to modulate the temperature uh to slowly drop that temperature in a way to cryo preserve the embryo very complex um you know biological process and uh would love to discuss it with somebody if you're ever interested it's fascinating but the the take home message here is um we can freeze embryos indefinitely and they will remain viable they will take a small hit in viability at the time of freezing like on the way down uh and they will take a small hit when you thaw them on the way up but that length of time in between uh could be literally could be 30 seconds uh two days or two million years and nothing will happen to the viability for that embryo um as long as it stays um at those liquid nitrogen temperatures which is what negative 380 degrees C or something like that so um so that's that's a really key Point too and in fact the U.S government um has a bank of uh they they are trying to uh collect all of the you know mammals and all the embryos that they can you know from all the different cattle species sheep and goats and zoo animals and they actually keep a bank of Frozen embryos just in case we should ever need to try to repopulate kind of like a Noah's Ark right um so it's really it's really interesting and they they keep this bank and they have that in place just in case we ever need to repopulate any of our um uh not only uh agricultural species but other species as well so uh it's also very convenient and inexpensive you can store these long-term very cheaply they're a very small package um so it's a very convenient way to uh to store uh genetics if we look at pregnancy rates um there's many many factors that go into this recipient quality um you know skill of the veterinarian doing the procedure like we mentioned the quality of the embryo itself is huge um and then the source of the embryo in Vivo or in vitro um a little bit lower pregnancy rates within vitro and um if we are if we have Frozen embryos we're probably going to have about a 10 point drop in pregnancy rate versus fresh embryos so I just want to introduce you a little bit to IVF now um so IDF or in vitro fertilization in vitro means outside of the body so outside of the body is where these are being grown where they're being fertilized and where they're being cultured so what we do with IVF is we will harvest unfertilized eggs or oocytes or recovering these directly from the ovaries of a donor uh buy a needle that's connected to a vacuum system those oocytes are matured for about one day and then we fertilize them with semen that's considered Day Zero and then we culture those for six more days uh before we either transfer or freeze those embryos and again the important part here is that the fertilization and the culture is all happening outside of the body so again in vitro okay so this is a picture on the left of uh some beautiful oocytes that we recovered so unfertilized eggs or oocytes they look very different than embryos they have all this big poofy cloudy uh cumulus cells that we we call them cumulus cells surrounding the oocytes those cumulus cells are an indicator of the health of the oocyte the more the better so this is a beautiful group of oocytes here they go into the IVF lab Gretchen and my team they do their thing um they fertilize them they culture them and then the picture on the right is a really beautiful group of IVF produced embryos from our lab and and some of them are they're even hatching and and those hatching embryos are the ones that are kind of they're they're cracked out of their shell and they're kind of elongating so you can see that there there's a few of those so if we go to the process of IVF and you may recognize this guy here up at the top um that's uh that's our friend Todd and I found this picture on on the internet so I thought I might as well just use it but here's here's a group of uh apparently some show winners that Todd had uh so these will be donors here today uh representing this this schematic it is isn't it I love it that's great oh shoot but yeah you can see here um so in this is just a schematic of the process we would retrieve the oocytes and on the left you can see a picture of the stimulated ovary you can kind of make out these blister like structures on the ovary so each of those is a follicle and you can see my troll car coming in and it's not a great picture but you could I'm stabbing a needle a fine needle into each of those follicles and we're sucking out the contents the follicular fluid we're removing those contents and we hope that the oocyte will come out with uh that fluid and we don't it's not a one for one but hopefully 50 to 70 percent of the time will recover um an oocyte so then we're we fertilize those in vitro and then uh they're cultured for five to seven days and there's another beautiful picture of some embryos and uh transfer them into recipients and we hopefully we get a bunch of nice Lambs on the ground sorry can you guys still am I still on here yeah yep great very good all right so we are almost done here a couple of last slides um we are partnering with a few different groups to do some research on improving the um efficacy of uh sheep IDF it's not perfect we have a long ways to go we're working on this and I'm going to hit on this a little bit later but I did just want to make mention and show a few pictures of some of the uh some of our friends and colleagues that we are working with uh to develop these procedures including uh some of you may know but RSG this is Logan Dr Logan down at RSG uh in Indiana all right so once we collect the oocytes we're going to search wash and grade them um that's on the next there we go um so again this is a beautiful picture a huge collection of os sites from a actually a bovine donor um I will admit uh but a really pretty picture of some OS sites there you can see some of those oocytes are a little bit what we would call strips they don't have as much cumulus cells on them um they can still make an embryo just maybe not quite to the degree that the ones that have lots of cumulus cells with um but so uh and and the really cool thing about osis I don't know if you guys can see it but in that upper right picture in in well five um oversights have enough cumulus cells that you can actually see them with the naked eye especially on like a black heating stage like we have here so you might be able to to appreciate in well five this is the exact same photo you're looking at um on the left in the right so you can actually see them it's a lot harder to see embryos uh than it is OS sites okay if we go to OSI grading and I'm I'm not going to get into this either too much um uh but I think you guys will be able to appreciate the picture on the left and the picture on the right okay they look very different um and this is what we do as embryologists um maybe to a little bit higher level but I think you guys can all appreciate here that on the left these are what we would consider degenerate or a tretic oocytes they're they're dying like these are not viable and on the right these are very healthy oocyte so visually this is what we're doing as embryologists um and uh we're applying that kind of science um details and preparation so you know AI conception rates are a predictor of the success of an ET program on any given Farm or in any given flock I mean they go hand in hand I mean it's gonna indicate Your Health Nutrition status vaccination status all these things are going to go into helping us achieve a very high level of of success um not only in AI but embryo transfer um work with your local veterinarian vaccinations deworming at least 30 days prior um if you want to have a successful ET program you know have an increasing plan of nutrition at least 45 days prior to the flush um that's where that word actually came from the flush you know so get them on an increasing plane of nutrition free choice minerals is huge great body condition scoring um we want them increasing in body condition score not going down it's not just a snapshot in time it's more important which direction they're going so those are some important details uh to keep in mind uh and then as far as when to transport recipients or lap AI uh um recipients or or donors even for that matter um we really just want to decrease stress okay uh I prefer they were only uh you know transported the day of lap AI or the day of flush or transfer and then leave them in their cohort groups for um you know at least 45 days that's that's the bottom line like leave them within their cohort groups for at least 45 days after the procedure if you really want to optimize your your results um it's just as simple as that stress the stress hormone cortisol it will decrease fertility and it's very real um I I can document it many many times over um all right so finally here advantages of IVF um it is the um quickest commercially available technology for genetic progress we could do these collections every couple of weeks even every five days if we want uh we can do pregnant donors because we are bypassing the uterus completely we're just going to the ovary so we can do pregnant donors you can do ulams or pre-pubertal donors uh a donor that has fertility problems there are so many advantages that IDF has uh a terminal genetic rescue you have a valuable you that um maybe she she broke her leg or something terrible happened to her and she is not going to survive well we have one last chance at harvesting her ovaries and doing a terminal session so um you know there are so many advantages to IVF we can use expensive or rare semen split it among multiple donors you know we can put it in you know in an IVF lab we can take that one unit of semen and put it in many different Wells and fertilize a lot of different donors you can't really do that with lap AI so bottom line is you can get more progeny per donor per year with a wider variety of mavings um and you basically increase the productive donor lifespan and this is really the key point that I want to hammer hone um you know we can do these surgical flushes on donors but after two or three flushes they will develop a lot of what we call adhesions um basically Scar Tissue on the inside which makes it you know really really tough to do the procedure again and again um and it gets to be almost you know even considering an animal welfare consideration at some point so this is really advantage of IVF is it's very it's it's not invasive at all and we can do these donors very often without creating Scar Tissue so again it increases the donor's lifespan from a productive embryo standpoint and uh ultimately will allow us to produce more offsprings per donor per year now the disadvantage is however it is expensive the equipment is expensive it is technically challenging and IVF embryos do have a little bit of a lower pregnancy rate than conventionally produced embryos but the biggest disadvantage right now is sheep is that it's still in basically research and development although we can achieve very high uh embryo production with cattle beef and dairy cattle and even very good production with goats um sheep for whatever reason uh they're being very challenging they are tough um and this is a huge part of uh r d for many IDF labs around the country everybody is working on trying to improve the culture ability of uh sheep in vitro produced embryos and I think we're going to get there within a year within a year or maybe two years tops uh it's going to be a technology that is going to really revolutionize uh the small room industry finally uh just why we do what we do um this is about sustainability and feeding the world and these are statistics from the cattle side of things but they're very noteworthy and and the same holds true uh for sheep as well but the world population is growing uh by 2050 they're talking 9.7 billion um it's it's it's insane um
but because of genetic selection and advancement and and what we do uh to propel that industry forward um you can look at these numbers they speak for themselves it's it's really incredible um but in the last 70 years we have 21 fewer cows they're being fed 23 less we're using 35 percent less water 10 percent less land 24 less manure and and the carbon emissions is 37 reduction um it's just this is this is largely um this is largely because of the genetic progress that we've made Within These breeds and the same will hold true for sheep and goats so with that I thank you for your time and uh be happy to entertain any questions yeah um so great job thanks Dr name I'm just gonna bring up the video um and as I do that can you just share out some like um obviously you're a veterinarian and you went through a number of years of school to kind of do this work you know what what might be some career options for people who are interested in reproduction in in this work but may not want to become a veterinarian but still wants to engage in this area of animal sciences and dairy science yeah great question so I mean we employ and businesses like myself are looking to hire individuals who want to help us manage our donor herds um be embryologists work in our IVF lab work shoot side with me um collecting donors um you know going on big lap AI days and working on surgical prep um and thawing semen so all all of those all of those areas um you know if you're not interested in becoming a veterinarian there are plenty of other opportunities to to still become very involved in this industry excellent great so here I am I'm going to play the video and um this was the video that we had captured from uh the animal science uh sheep well the Sheep uh what is it Todd the the uh Wisconsin sheep uh breeders annual meeting and their educational program and uh Dr Nate did this this presentation and so I'm just gonna play it that um what what the so I'm just gonna have Dr Nate kind of talk over what they're doing and we'll get a u on a cradle here really quickly to show you what um actually all this is in real time so I'll mute myself and and pass this to Dr Nate okay yeah so um in so right now they are uh they're clipping they're clipping a neck on a u um and I'm going to sedate her uh with uh a little cocktail of torb ketamine and xylazine uh this this uh chemical cocktail has worked really well as a sedative for us um so you're gonna see me doing that here in a little bit um so right here I'm holding off the jugular vein and it's going to become distended and you can't really see it well but I'm basically injecting this cocktail right now I and that's going IV so intravenously and again this is something normally my technicians would be doing um so you'll see me I'm trying to do all of it today I didn't have I did not have technicians here uh for this but again just to kind of piggyback on Bernie's earlier question um these are all aspects of things that somebody could help support um or be involved with uh if if they were interested so you can see she she knocked out really really quickly here we got her up we lifted her up on the Cradle um they're going to secure all of her all four legs we have some giant twist ties that work really well for this purpose um so we're getting her you can see how well sedated she is she is knocked out um so yeah we're getting we're getting those twist ties on there and then they're going to start clipping and prepping here we go oops so they're clipping her up Todd's doing the sheer job and then here's where um Holly right Dr Holly is helping prepare the area of right Dr Nate that's right yep Holly is open here so Holly is one of the veterinarians for the University um and she's uh she's been great she's we work with Holly quite a bit and she's helping us out here uh getting them all all uh cleaned up we use a we use uh some chlorhexidine and we use um some alcohol to make sure that that surgical site is as clean as it can possibly be there we go fast and fast forwarding through uh this part and this is where you're kind of talking about the light in your scope and some of the pieces I may have gone a little bit too far but yeah TrueCar yeah go ahead nope right here this is where you're here I'm giving a lidocaine block so I'm doing a local anesthetic procedure we're using lidocaine to block locally right where my chokers are going to go through so troll cars are again it's like a window like I said uh you'll see those I'm gonna put those through her abdomen but with this little bit of Lidocaine that I put on both sides now she's not going to be able to feel that so they're going to wheel her over and put her in place here yeah one thing I know there was a question earlier on is you know if this puts a lot of pressure on the on the diaphragm and causes you to have trouble breathing these use were held off of feed and water for 24 hours so the rumen is empty their bladder is theoretically empty as well um and typically when Nate is doing this and he's got his whole team there she's only going to be inclined for probably you know 45 seconds to two minutes at the most if he's struggling to get the semen in her so this is a little longer this one was took a little bit longer than typical because Nate didn't have anybody there getting the semen straws loaded for him but when he does these views are not upside down for very long at all and and again as I said it's real critical that you hold them off of feeding water for that 24 hours minimum as well just to help take that pressure off of the diaphragm and off of the lungs but in order to get to the the uterine horns we've got to Incline him to get all those intestines to fall away from the reproductive tract yeah that's exactly right Todd 100 like if we have my whole team there we're gonna crank through these um yeah I would say a minute to two minutes like that's it they'll only be up for that long but yeah we have to have them inverted in this position so all the viscera or GI you know everything kind of fall away from the uterine horn I you maybe missed it there I I insufflated her with some CO2 so I can see I inserted now my my laparoscope and I was looking through there to identify that I was in the right location and I was um and then I'm gonna go ahead and put in the other troll car on the other side where you can see where I blocked a little blood there so I'm gonna put that other trochar in and that's where um that location is where we will place the AI gun with the loaded semen straw okay so and I'm just kind of manipulating and looking around making sure everything looks good want to make sure we have a clean stick and we're not going to be um we don't have intestines or the bladder or any of these other structures in the way so yeah here's where I have to go around and thaw the semen for myself ordinarily he would have been inseminated by now and then down off the table um but so here we are which is good you can see here so I grab the straw semen put it in the the water bath and we're thawing it right now how long does it stay in the water bath uh Dr Nate yeah so 60 to 90 seconds it can be longer but um excuse me um really importantly you know we got to make sure we wipe all the water off of the semen straw because that water will um will damage the semen if it makes contact so once I pull that out you'll see me I'll wipe that off really good uh there we are so cleaning off all the water off that the the exterior of the seam ends Raw and uh actually have to go get a scissors here to cut the the semen straw open so I do that and then we load it into the AI gun so you'll see this here in just a minute and as he's doing that Holly's monitoring the you and managing her to make sure she's doing okay yep Dr Holly that is yep and so here I'm loading it up and I'm gonna actually Advance the tip of the gun just to make sure that I you pull off the protective cover I want to make sure that I see a drop of semen coming out the very tip of that needle and I did so I'm gonna go ahead now and yeah again like I was saying when Nate's got his whole crew there he's got one person that's dedicated to just loading those semen straws for him and he's typically got one straw loaded and another one you know ready to be loaded especially if they know if we've got to use sorted and they're coming through right where we're using the same RAM on a group of five or six use you know they can pull up a straw ahead and have it in the water bath thawing while he's Ai and you ahead of her so it just goes that quickly as long as you have the crew there that can keep it going steady for Nate and while he's doing this too the other part you know just to kind of keep in mind is you know many of you who are buying cattle or project animals sheep swine you know beef many of your project animals may be going through um or or our progeny of AI work or ET work so um there's investment in your projects to be high quality so um it's kind of neat to see this reproduction on the backside which is maybe not something you see so I'll be quiet so Dr Nate can describe this yeah no you're good and um I I wish we had a video so you could see what I'm looking at and that's something I think we should work with maybe we can do that for for a future year um but uh but that that was it there it was I injected it we're all good I let out some of the CO2 from the abdomen um very minimal bleeding it's very again very non-invasive procedure I do like to put in a staple or two it's basically a suture a metal suture that'll fall out within a few weeks um so we like to do that just to be extra cautious but really you don't need to it's such a small incision and the way we enter the abdomen at an angle it closes itself up kind of um but that that that's it and uh like Todd said I mean normally uh this is uh like we probably would have had five of them done in that time if if we had our whole team we were kind of cruising along here so uh we do like to put a little bit of a biological bandage uh that's uh some aluminum spray and we like to cover them with one injection of an antibiotic like uh like oxytet and then you gave um I think an antibiotic right um to this you or you do give that correct yeah we like to use oxytetry yep okay um so yeah I guess I just wanted to reiterate that um you know just in terms of what uh Dr Nate has talked about it with expense and all those things that you know just keep that in mind when you're looking for your project animals some of you maybe have everything already for this year sheep and pigs are you're certain to go through that process or have completed them and again many of your your animals are coming from these types of reproductive Technologies um so right increasing advancement of your higher quality animals to be able to then uh be able to right sell them as project animals for students and youth to show and so you can see they took her off the cradle and they give her a little minute to to wake up here here's that oxy um uh antibiotic shot and then I think it was just a few minutes later she was up I don't know if we have a if the video captures that or not but um yeah anything else you want to kind of end with your Dr Nate or in in Todd 2 any other comments related to uh this technology and just like how it's advancing the the world of genetics yeah I mean I don't know Todd do you have any thoughts on this you know I just I think from from an advantage standpoint the biggest thing for me and the reason we're using it here is it's getting harder and harder to find the ram genetics that we want and be able to afford them from a standpoint of buying the buck that we need and and by this method we can bring in different semen on different Rams and try them on different use we maintain some biosecurity that way as well um and that's actually it's helping me go back and find some older genetics that I know breeders put up 10 15 years ago still have a little bit of that semen left and I can utilize it uh to try to go back to stuff that I knew worked years ago so that's the biggest reason we're using it on the embryo transfer side we've just started to kind of get into that and again that's to kind of more or less proliferate our high quality females that we really want to get more actually what I really want out of those females is more daughters to go ahead and replace them within the flock so that you know we can we can substantially increase our genetic Superior use and have more her daughters out of those used for the Next Generation or two generations or three generations however many so um so it's it's definitely got its advantages the the the IVF stuff really excites me I'm looking forward to helping and working with Nate a little bit on that in the future and see if you know if we can make some of those kind of techniques come to fruition and sheep because I think that'll be that'll be really good since this is a surgical technique in shape the number of times that we can flush use is is probably limited a little bit more than it is in cattle so if we can get to where we don't have to do the full surgery and and can aspirate or aspirate over off of them I think we can do more with females than what we can with even the ET stuff so yeah yeah absolutely and I I think on the the IVF thing what a lot of our clients are saying what they're really excited about is um that generation interval that I mentioned being able to collect these U Lambs the same year I mean you think about how quickly we can turn this I mean it it's it's pretty uh it's insane really awesome all right well I it is just a little after eight I um really appreciate both Todd and Dr Nate's time tonight I always learn more and more every time I listen to a reproduction um presentation because every year there's more advancements there's more learned uh knowledge and they're putting it into practice so um I think this type of Technology fascinates me and it's always one of those things that is ever changing and it's something to keep up to date as a producer and an exhibitor because there's always that importance of in increasing and right having available high quality animals and um for food consumption products wool um you know Dairy eggs all the things that we consume that are high levels and dense protein that you know right reproduction really is the beginning of all that so um yeah I just want to thank you guys for being on great questions tonight this is the last one as I mentioned for for this year I'm just gonna remind you of two things one to make sure you fill out the uh survey and that'll be up on uh the uh once you close Zoom tonight you'll be able to hurry up and do that and we'd love to hear from you what other activities and topics you want to hear more about and then um of course look for us um for the the recording I'll send an email out about that and then look for us really the in the fall of the year we'll start making announcements for the next year's topics and we'd love for you to participate um next year as well again don't forget here at this link is that educational verification form so if you need to get verification from your county fair or local area that you've attended it something that's educational and you learned you know five new things and and you're going to share out three new ideas to your friends and family or other folks you'd like to share about this session um please write that in that verification form and turn it into your local people uh please don't send it to me although I love to read what you learned um it's really for your local fair uh show and sale groups um so again it's been a pleasure to host these this year and um all the best to uh for a great summer in Spring showing season enjoy your time and learn lots and spend some good high quality time with family and friends at the fair and those are always the great memory times that we all kind of remember when we're older so remember that I'm sure Todd and Nate both have those experiences we both were well all three of us grew up in this world of animals and youth 4-H FFA and organizations such as those so um continue the the good work that these organizations provide you and have a great year have a good night everyone thank you all right thank you good night everybody yep thanks Dr name thanks Todd thanks guys
2023-04-11 10:21
