Prof Richard Fry Interview Part 3

To recap from Part 2 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.

The tools of Angus IVF!

Mark

Thanks Richard, can we switch gears to where this technology is going?

We dried off from the rain yesterday, we came by the fire here and sat down, had a beer and started talking about the juvenile collections that you've been doing.

Richard

Yeah, this was one of the reasons I enjoy being a scientist. Early on my interests were the juvenile from a scientific point of view and from a genetic gain point of view.

We can collect eggs, from six months old calves, females, then we essentially can't do anything about than nine months gestation. But we can pretty well make the generation about 15 months, rather than 30 months, where you normally clipped out at about 15-month-old then add nine months to get to 24 - 30 months, right? Yeah. So we can really halve that generation interval by collecting off very young animals.

And that's what interests me since 1992.

Mark

That’s a while ago Richard, he got it right?

Richard

Not yet. We know we can do it, you know the ovaries are as smallest little finger. So we know we need to have hormonal stimulation on those animals. And then we can collect the eggs and we know we can collect eggs.

But those eggs from juveniles are compromised, and we're still working on ways of making that better. So with those eggs, we can make embryos and we can get pregnancies, but the rates at the moment are probably too low to be commercially adopted widely. It still is used a little bit in specific niche markets or regions.

But it's not used widely, which I think is when you're talking about in the future. This will be the future when we can get those oocytes competent so we get similar rates of embryo development and pregnancy rates that we get with adults then I think this juvenile work will really take off because you can actually pedigree stack that way.

Mark

Yeah, so we're having the generational turnover scenario. And boy, oh boy that is so significant. And it just underlines the importance of genomics because otherwise, you can make a dogs breakfast of all of this.

Richard

When I was working as a research scientist that's what we got the money to do. But then because genomics took so long, actually, because there were gene markers in those days.

they said they could work out the gene markers in three years and we'll be able to tell you how good your juvenile is when the animals born, how good it's gonna be. However the reality is that its only come online in the last three or four years. Yeah. Right.

So that technology is what's held back juvenile technology. So we had research funding in those days and we got so far along the track myself and another scientist Colin Earl from South Australia.

Yep, we are so far along the track, but then all the funding dried up because they couldn't identify that when the female was born, how good it was going to be and the genomic technology has taken 20 years to develop.

And that's largely due to the capacity of computers, my understanding is to handle all the data and get good value. But now that you can identify or fairly reasonably, identify those elite females when they're born, then it's juvenile technology that interests me even more. And I think the adaptation of the technology will be adopted by the industry pretty quick if we can get it working.

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

Mark

Well, we're looking forward to hearing lots more about that. Look, it's been good to chat. We better go and brush off the gumboots. I'll tell you what, just this whole exercise of coming down here, synchronizing cows getting ready in the middle of a COVID environment, we didn't know whether you were going to be able to be here until the very last moment. Its a heck of a way to lift the stress levels.

But it's been a fabulous few days and we look forward to you coming back again another time and we'll let you know how things pan out when we preg test.

Richard

Okay, thanks I look forward to doing more work and more research with you. Terrific. Cheers.

Mark:

Now that we are done and dusted with that program, we’ll await the preg test results to see how successful it’s really been.

In the meantime, we are planning a Special Spring Sale of pregnant recipients for those who would like to secure some top 1% breeders. They will be represented by a mix of elite donors and sires with predictive mating statistics that are second to none.

We will be offering a limited number of PTIC recipients for those who do not want the risk of getting a successful pregnancy. These pregnancies will come from our August ET program and will have an end of May and end of June calving. They will be available in November once their pregnancy is regarded as secure to travel.

We’ll also be able to tell you what sex the calf will be!

As the Australian herd rebuild gathers pace, it makes great economic sense to underpin your herd with future-focused female genetics and renowned sires. The combinations of which has taken many generations and enables you to create a solid foundation from which to grow your cattle business.

All the details will be on the Barnett Angus website in the coming weeks. Feel free to register your interest on our email update list so you can get the details as they come to hand.

I hope you have enjoyed this three part interview and please drop us an email any time and share your thoughts on ways of advancing the wonderful Angus breed.

All the best. Mark