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ROMAX

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Apr 12, 2008
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kintore,ontario, canada
This may sound stupid but i was wondering,if you clone a heifer that can't reproduce(freemartin) will cloning her get you one that will?
 

justintime

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May 26, 2007
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Saskatchewan Canada
Speaking of cloning this is way off topic, but I heard a scientist interviewed on the radio today. Apparently a baby Mammoth was found two years ago, frozen in perfect condition somewhere in Siberia. It is now going to displayed around the world for the next 5 years by the Russian government. The scientist who was interviewed was invited to do some work with the team that worked with this Mammoth baby when it was found. They are seriously thinking of trying to clone it, to produce a live Mammoth, centuries after they went extinct.  If they actually do this what is next... a dinosaur? Interesting to say the least!
 

Telos

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Feb 4, 2007
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Dallas, Texas
justintime said:
Speaking of cloning this is way off topic, but I heard a scientist interviewed on the radio today. Apparently a baby Mammoth was found two years ago, frozen in perfect condition somewhere in Siberia. It is now going to displayed around the world for the next 5 years by the Russian government. The scientist who was interviewed was invited to do some work with the team that worked with this Mammoth baby when it was found. They are seriously thinking of trying to clone it, to produce a live Mammoth, centuries after they went extinct.  If they actually do this what is next... a dinosaur? Interesting to say the least!

From what  I understand they are seriously thinking about cloning the Mammouth. My question is how will they grow the embryo?

It would be great if we could come to some common ground with designing these show steers. Humans do make mistakes in the selection process and sometimes it is just in poor taste and very unpractical. I remembered going to a big state show several years back and watching at least 70% of the steers having trouble moving. IMO, we probably have tried to pack on too much product in too short of an evolutionary time frame, and not considered the skeletal structure it goes on. One thing I have observed is the doubled muscle cattle, like the Belgium Blue, seem to do pretty well when it come to soundness. It is their bone structure that I look at... It appears lighter and flatter with a good deal of flex. A good show steer bone is a whole lot heavier and appears not as flat. Wonder if anyone could comment on this and tell me if I'm  just crazy.
 

herefordfootball

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Apr 10, 2009
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Northern, Indiana
justintime said:
Speaking of cloning this is way off topic, but I heard a scientist interviewed on the radio today. Apparently a baby Mammoth was found two years ago, frozen in perfect condition somewhere in Siberia. It is now going to displayed around the world for the next 5 years by the Russian government. The scientist who was interviewed was invited to do some work with the team that worked with this Mammoth baby when it was found. They are seriously thinking of trying to clone it, to produce a live Mammoth, centuries after they went extinct.  If they actually do this what is next... a dinosaur? Interesting to say the least!

Wow. It would be cool to see a mammoth, but I think cloning a frozen one is going to far, that stuff happened a long time ago for a reason, I dont know why, but I'm sure there was reason behind it. That'd be crazy if the cloned a dinasaur, hmmm... anybody ever seen Jurassic Park  (lol)
 

justintime

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May 26, 2007
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Saskatchewan Canada
It was mentioned in the interview I heard, that they would use an elephant as the surrogate mother to raise the embryo. They seem to think the DNA between the two animals are fairly close.

Telos, I think your wish for some common ground in designing show steers, takes a little more imagination that cloning a mammoth does. It would be something like asking 10 economists a question... you usually end up with 10 different answers and possibly 11 if one of them went to Harvard.

In regards to you comments about double muscled animals, I think you are correct in what you are saying. The Belgian Blue show ( or British Blues, as they are called in Britain)  was one of the largest beef shows at the Royal Highland show , in Edinburgh last year when I was there. I also saw many Blue cattle in the farms I visited. Many of the cattle I saw, did not have legs that would be considered acceptable here in N America. They were finer boned, and flatter as you mentioned, but they also were what we commonly refer to as sickle hocked. They did have lots of flex in their joints and I think these traits have developed over time. With the muscle mass these animals have I think the animals with leg structure that could not handle the weight, probably were eliminated from the population by natural selection. When viewing a commercial herd that was using Belgian Blue bulls, I asked if they had many problems with feet and legs from using these bulls. The owner said that they had almost no problems with legs and feet, from either the Blue bulls or their offspring.

Personally, if I had to chose between a straight legged bull or a sickle hocked bull, I would take the sickle hocked bull every time. Legs with too much curvature do not look very attractive, but I have never heard of a bull with this trait having to be shipped because he was crippled. That certainly cannot be said about straight legged cattle... almost 100% of them go to town( or die on the farm)  because they are crippled. Many of them get crippled at extremely young ages as well.
 

Carm

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Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
26
Are cloned animals allowed for human consumption now?  When the first dairy cows were cloned they were not allowed to sell their milk.  I don't think they are in Canada.  My wife works at Semex Canada and they can not sell semen from cloned bulls in Canada yet. 
 
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