In Russia, scientists are conducting laboratory work on cloning a breeding bull
“The company’s immediate plans include creating a cloned breeding bull. Unlike cloned cows, whose milk production will not be able to quickly recoup the costs of their production, breeding bulls allow for multi-million dollar profits from the sale of semen. The cloned bull will be the first in Russia,” the report says.
Two Jersey and Hereford bulls were selected for cloning, and to date, 170 embryos of each animal have been prepared in the laboratory's cryobank, ready for implantation. The cloning process allows you to create an exact genetic copy of the donor, and the productivity of the clone directly depends on the choice of the donor.
Recall that a year ago, the first clone, the cow "Zvezdochka", was born on the farm of the Rassvet enterprise in the Krasnodar Territory using the method of hand cloning. This copy of a Holstein cow weighing 800 kg, which gave birth to seven healthy calves during its life, showed high milk yields - 18 tons of milk per year (with an average of 10-11 tons). In the first year of life, "Zvezdochka" gained 523 kg, which is 200 kg more than her peers.
Victoria Yurchenko, Head of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving Department at Progress Agro Group of Companies, emphasized: “The idea of cloning a record-breaking cow arose as a response to the current challenges facing modern animal husbandry. This is to ensure food security by creating a herd of healthy and highly productive cows, preserving valuable genetic lines and reducing dependence on foreign supplies of genetic material. Traditional selection methods are probabilistic in nature and require a long time, while cloning allows you to reproduce a genetically perfect animal within one gestation cycle. This technology can become a key tool in achieving sustainable and highly efficient animal husbandry in Russia.”
Last year, the first calf in the country obtained using the new Handmade cloning technology, which is a clone of a Holstein cow, was registered on a farm in the Ust-Labinsky district of Kuban. In the first year of life, “Zvezdochka” gained 523 kg, which is 200 kg more than her peers.
