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posted by mrpg on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the fork-it dept.

It's a girl: first IVF bison calf joins Northern Colorado herd

And then there were... 44. Eight bison — four calves and their mothers — were released in mid-March on public lands in northern Colorado, bringing the total number of animals in the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd to 44.

A 10-month-old calf known as IVF 1 was among the newcomers. She is the first bison calf conceived using in vitro fertilization, or IVF, at Colorado State University. IVF 1 is also the first bison calf in the world to be conceived using reproductive material from animals removed from Yellowstone National Park.

This type of technology could provide a solution for conservationists seeking to protect animals facing extinction, like the Northern white rhinoceros in Africa.

[...] [Jennifer Barfield, a reproductive physiologist with the CSU Animal Reproduction and Biotechnology Laboratory,] said the team will transfer more IVF embryos later this year. She and the project partners hope to one day have 100 bison in the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd. [...] The use of this reproductive technology in American bison also opens up another avenue for conservation efforts. Barfield's lab at CSU has approximately 1,500 frozen embryos that could be used in a year, or even in a hundred years. "That gives us the opportunity to access these Yellowstone genetics for a very long time," she said.


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  • (Score: 1) by hereweareagain on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:29PM

    by hereweareagain (6590) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:29PM (#659566) Homepage

    ...were they released on a Tuesday?

    --
    --I'm willing to admit I just *might* be wrong... Are you?