Prof Richard Fry Interview Part 2

Mark Barnett (L) and Prof Richard Fry (R) well into Angus Cattle IVF session

To recap from Part 1 of our interview: Dr Richard Fry and a team of embryo specialists made it into Tassie after considerable stress and negotiations to enable their travel to implant IVF embryo into cows that had been synchronised just before a Victorian Covid outbreak. In this three part series we explore with Richard the complexities, benefits and downsides of the every evolving IVF technology.

I hope you enjoy the recording of my conversation with Richard.

Mark

So exploring further how different IVF is to normal mullet:

Richard

The differences. Most of the work is done in the laboratory, rather than the cow. So it's more difficult and more expensive. Because we're taking the eggs by ultrasound from the cow. And doing the fertilization in the lab, then we have to grow them for six days in a lab to an embryo before we freeze them or transfer them.

So that's very briefly the procedure. The advantages are that we do it with animals without hormone stimulation. So you can particularly in Boston, because in the northern part of Australia, that they don't like needles, and they don't like being handled twice a day often bring so they can bring them straight out of the paddock to you that morning.

You can do the collection and go back out in a paddock. And the same with dairy cows, they can after milking, they can bring the dairy cow to you, you can do the pickup and then take them back.

So we do that or we travel on the farm to do it's better in an environment, you know your own fixed environment, you know, you will get better results because everything is controlled compared with on-farm.

But Australia is a big place. So you know not it's not viable to ship the cows all the time. It's easy to ship. So having centers around the place would be a huge advantage. But the benefit of IVF is that one You don't need to use drugs two that you can do it in situations that you can't do mullet.

So one of the interesting things in what we do quite regularly is collect eggs off pregnant cows. So those cows can be up to four months pregnant and you can still collect

Because you're bypassing the uterus, you can still collect eggs off of the ovaries and never removed. Okay, so that's an advantage because normally in mullet programs, the cow might well not have a calf for 1, 2, 3 years because she's a very good cow, and they've been flushed all the time.

Yeah. Whereas with this procedure, you can do it when they're non-pregnant, but you can also do it, you can also mate that cow so you can be pregnant, so you know that she gets pregnant carries a calf raises a calf. So a natural calf and you can get whatever you get from IVF is additional to what you normally get through AI or natural mating and so on.

Mark

And so Richard is there an average number that is different in terms of embryos collected from one method versus the other?

Richard

It depends on species, and the number depends on spaces like obviously if you get twice as many eggs from Brahman type cattle, you're going to make twice as many embryos on average as you would from say, Holsteins.

Angus sits somewhere in the middle, where we will make an average of four to five embryos per donor. But it can vary like flushing night traditional flushing from naught to 10, yet, but you will still average about four to five.

I guess with Mullet, it's around about six. So but it is comparable. The other advantage with IVF is that we can collect off the same animal every week or every fortnight. So you can build a bank of embryos very quickly from your elite animals, which effectively is what we've done. Yeah.

And the challenge that we've had is to be able to freeze these IVF embryos, and but we're getting on top of that, now I'm getting pretty reasonable results where you would expect to get at least a 40% pregnancy rate with these embryos, yet, we're hoping for more than average, we always have.

I don't like to oversell technology and get people's expectations too high. But you've covered so much ground you never over-promise I can see that. No, no, that's right. That look a lot of people do over-promise with the new technology. And then that leads to disappointment.

And, and probably it has led to the length of uptake of the technology in Australia from over-promising various, you know, we in South America, particularly Brazil, where they have a narrow cattle and they get even more eggs and you get from Brahman, really, yeah, they probably average 30 eggs compared with about 12 with an Angus.

So if they're producing about eight embryos so becomes a very efficient technology. So that's why the uptake was not because the technology was better just because of the breed of animals. So is a big breed variation, it probably with, in Australia Braham would probably be up the top.

Holsteins are probably the most difficult, which wouldn't surprise anyone. But having said with where you collect an average of probably about six to eight, our sites and make two to three embryos. Yep. They've probably doesn't surprise anyone, because they've been bred specifically for milk.

And when you breed for one trait, the other traits fall away a bit. Yeah, that is being addressed. And having said that, I mean, we have still done Holsteins that might produce you 12 embryos, you know, so you do get individuals is a huge individual variation as Yeah, well,

Mark

I was gonna ask you about that the variation within the breed when you can find your outliers and yeah,

Richard

I'm what's interesting, you know, I still buy palpation, because if you put your hand in and feel the ovary, it's the ovary is what I call a pancake ovary, a flat ovary, therefore follicles, I don't know the reason for it, but if they're flat, I think I read even in Holsteins, you will get quite a lot of eggs.

But the the frequency of picking those animals up in Holsteins is a lot lower than other in other breeds. It's quite common in Brahman.

Mark

So can we see in the future you dropping into a farm that might be a collection of on their farm there might be a collection of neighbour's cows 10 or a dozen that you would operate on?

Yeah, in a day and then disappear and back to your lab with the goodies. And I'm just trying to think of the practicality from the farmer-owners point of view and from the, from the donor cow owners point of view. So you mentioned no drugs, just

Richard

bring them in, bring them in? Yeah, now and we do that now. And particularly for I'm not only dairy cows, but particularly for dairy cows were at a certain place they like on Monday, this Monday, I'm going to a place in Victoria where I'm going to be doing 13 dairy cows, they're not all from that client, he might have four and then there's other from other clients are collected at that place, because it's not efficient going round to each place doing two cows.

No, no, no, no, we can't make money out of that as any of setting up doing the work, you're doing an hour's work on an hour and a half's worth pulling down going in next place, it doesn't work like that we can. So we have this setup, because we need to take out essentially like a little lab where to find the eggs and put them in the media. So maturation media to start growing embryos on site.

Mark

So you could do a dozen cows or 15 a day is a good day

Richard

15. Yeah, 15 is a good number. 10 is okay, 20 is good. But after 20, for one operator, it's getting a fairly big day, but it is in the order of doing between 10 and 20. And 15 is a good day. But if they're all at one centre, then you can it's very efficient, you know, you just doing one cow after another after another, and the lab is set up and it becomes quite efficient.

And then we get enough eggs, and enough individuals to overcome the individual variation. If we go to do two animals, you don't know we've got two poor ones, two good ones, one good one, one poor one, whatever, in terms of egg, egg numbers of eggs and quality of eggs. If you do at least 10 animals, you're gonna get something. So it makes sense to be able to pool about 10 animals.

So then you can work on averages. When you work with really low numbers. You can't work on averages. Yeah. So if we were doing 10 Angus, we would expect to produce 40 embryos? Yeah, it could be. It could be as low as 20 one Day it could be as high as 60. Another day. Yeah.

Just on unlock stage of the cycle. When you do it, all those types of things. Nutrition, which we don't know much about. But all of those sorts of things that could depend upon that you would average you should average from 10 animals 40 to 50 embryos each time.

Mark

This looks like it could be a new service that could be coordinated as a collective of breeders Donor cows and even facilitates the collection from pregnant Donors - isn't technology wonderful.

Richard, we'll leave it there for the moment and return to discuss the advancements in juvenile collections and how to halve the genetic turnover period.

Next we are talking about halving the time of genetic turnover. See you soon.