LN
Well-known member
I'm considering using it on a couple donors. Does anyone have experience with using IVF and what were your thoughts?
Has anyone used IVF?
- Thread starter LN
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twistedhshowstock
Well-known member
I have never used IVF personally but have several friends and colleagues who have. Naturally it is a bit more expensive, conception rates tend to be a little lower on IVF embryos, and IVF embryos dont tend to freeze as well as flush embryos, so you will want to have recips ready for your embryos as soon as they are ready to go in. Personally for me to use IVF it would have to be a very good bull that semen is limited on or on an older cow that I want to just get as many calves as possible out of. For me to IVF the cow and bull would both have to be tremendous. Another good thing for IVF is if you are close enough(within an hour or 2) to an IVF facility and you have a good cow that dies unexpetedly or a good cow that breaks a leg or something, you can cut the ovaries out and get them to the facility within a few hours of death and sometimes they can still salvage oocytes from them.
LN
Well-known member
Here's my scenario...
We got back into the registered business a couple years ago and have a couple older cows that have proven themselves over a decade. I want female replacements from these cows. They were bred to the repeat AI so to do conventional ET I would have to freeze the embryos and put them in the following year because the time line wouldn't work with the big synch. And there's no guarantee I'd get the amount of female progeny I want.
This is why I'm investigating IVF.
We got back into the registered business a couple years ago and have a couple older cows that have proven themselves over a decade. I want female replacements from these cows. They were bred to the repeat AI so to do conventional ET I would have to freeze the embryos and put them in the following year because the time line wouldn't work with the big synch. And there's no guarantee I'd get the amount of female progeny I want.
This is why I'm investigating IVF.
Doc
Well-known member
LN said:
Based on my personal experience using IVF, I would try flushing the cows with sexed semen. I am just not a big fan at all on IVF.
LN
Well-known member
bump
twistedhshowstock
Well-known member
I am not sure I understand, are you saying that at this point you would have to wait until next yr to put embryos in? If that is the case then I think I would use traditional flush as the embryos from a traditional flush seem to freeze a little better than the embryos from ET. If you are trying to get as many embryos as possible out of older cows then I think IVF would be an option, but like I said, the TransOva facility here recomends putting the embryos in fresh rather than freezing them when performing IVF because the embryos just dont seem to freeze as well, not to say they wont freeze but conception rates just arent as high with frozen IVF embryos. Another good point is that they can aspirate oocytes from cows even after they are bred, I think it is up to 90 days bred, but may be longer. When aspirating oocytes for IVF they actually bypass the cervix and uterus so it will not damage a pregnancy.
showsteerdlux
Well-known member
twistedhshowstock said:
You are correct, it is 90 days. I've also heard that you will have better luck with sexed semen through IVF than flushing.
LN
Well-known member
What I was trying to say is if I conventionally flushed these two cows I would have freeze the embryos and wait until the next breeding season to implant. If I used IVF I could transfer fresh.
twistedhshowstock
Well-known member
I guess its a personal opinion then. Personally I would decide how much I am willing to put into it, how old the cows are, and how rare or expensive the semen is. If a cow is old and I dont think she has a lot of time left I may put the money into IVFing her, even more so if the semen is expensive semen. I guess it depends on what you really want to do??? IVF is more expensive with a lower conception rate while conventional flush is cheaper with a higher conception rate, but I think they both have their place.
LN
Well-known member
Thanks for the advice, I talked with a conventional ET tech and he thinks my cows will be enough days post calving to do a fresh transfer so I'm gonna play safe and do that for now. But it's always fun to discuss newer innovations that are available.
