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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:03PM (2 children)
So they hope to have 100 bison "one day". They have 44 now. Estimate 30 cows, producing 20 calves a year that survive with good husbandry. Sounds like "one day" is about 3 years from now, if they do nothing. Many forms of wildife have got this reproduction business figured out.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday March 28 2018, @10:56PM (1 child)
Sounds about right. I was wondering if they taste nice or if their milk makes great cheese or something.
If someone can make a good living from farming them it would seem an easy way to rescue them from extinction.
It might be be the best thing for their gene pool of course...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @04:35AM
Buffalo are farmed pretty successfully, for meat and skin mostly AIUI, they've not been bred for milk production like cows. I can't imagine bison are too different.