Picking Recipient Cows

Hello everyone,

It’s been a minute since I’ve last been on the wonderful Steer Planet, but I’m back with yet another question for y’all.

So I’m buying my first embryos and I’m very excited to be doing so.

But I have a question, how do you pick your recipient cows? I’ve got 3 candidates currently but wanted to see what y’all thought.

Candidate 1: 2015 model Holstein X cow. Has only been natural bred. Has bred back great every year but last year she was open.

Candidate 2: 2019 Daughter of cow above. Just had her second calf in March. Bred great both times. Only has been natural bred.

Candidate 3: 2018 Brangus cow. She was a bottle calf so didn’t get bred until later. Bred great both times, second breeding was via AI.

All have done great using their calves. I’m kind of limited on what to use, as I have a lot of 1st and 2nd time calvers, and some of which I want to AI back to a good bull to produce good calves. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

number one thing I look for is if they have worked before as a recipient.  Anything that is open I have a vet evaluate.

My opinion is they should be some of the best maternal cows you own. The cows that have great fertility, mothering ability and produce ample milk. I use some of my best cows to carry embryos and have greater success than just throwing them at junk cows. It’s a huge investment.

beebe said:

number one thing I look for is if they have worked before as a recipient.  Anything that is open I have a vet evaluate.

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Thank you. As I stated, these are my first embryos so none of these guys have ever been recipients before. The one that was open was checked as fine, she just wasn’t bred for whatever reason. Of course all 3 will be checked beforehand to make sure they are good to go.

CRS said:

My opinion is they should be some of the best maternal cows you own. The cows that have great fertility, mothering ability and produce ample milk. I use some of my best cows to carry embryos and have greater success than just throwing them at junk cows. It’s a huge investment.

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Thanks! All are excellent milkers and good mothers. Like I said pretty good fertility overall. My herd is still small so trying to AI some of my better cows abs use some of my “not as showy” cows for recipients.

Someone who had been around extreme high dollar cattle said that the recip cow has more to do with the quality of the calf than one would expect.  The same commercial recip cow (a different breed than the embryo) raised their best ET calf every year--that producer valued her at well into 5 figures.

They suggested that there may have been some of the recip cow's genes in the calf she carries.  Impossible?  With her blood circulating through the recip, was something genetic going on?  That recip cow consistently raised a calf with superior phenotype when compared to the rest of their ET calves. 

Dale said:

Someone who had been around extreme high dollar cattle said that the recip cow has more to do with the quality of the calf than one would expect.  The same commercial recip cow (a different breed than the embryo) raised their best ET calf every year--that producer valued her at well into 5 figures.

They suggested that there may have been some of the recip cow's genes in the calf she carries.  Impossible?  With her blood circulating through the recip, was something genetic going on?  That recip cow consistently raised a calf with superior phenotype when compared to the rest of their ET calves.

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I have heard that referred to as epigenetics.

Dale said:

Someone who had been around extreme high dollar cattle said that the recip cow has more to do with the quality of the calf than one would expect.  The same commercial recip cow (a different breed than the embryo) raised their best ET calf every year--that producer valued her at well into 5 figures.

They suggested that there may have been some of the recip cow's genes in the calf she carries.  Impossible?  With her blood circulating through the recip, was something genetic going on?  That recip cow consistently raised a calf with superior phenotype when compared to the rest of their ET calves.

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Interesting concept/observation/fact.

I would say 2 and 3 since 1 was open last year and embroys are expensive