I am not following you...Suggesting that breeders could keep viable embryos on hand to implant? Choose the number of pups?

Seems like it would be really cost prohibitive.....
Not to mention, why would we want our females to have 4 times as many pups?

Juli

 

I think the idea is that she doesn't have to carry all of them. They can be whelped by other mothers thus giving you a greater genetic population, more like we get from the studs now.

 

They do this in horses a lot. If say you have a mare that is competing and you don't want to take her out of comp to foal then they will use a surrogate. They also do this with older mares to try and get more babies out of a good mare. I could see them starting to do this with dogs with older ones who can't carry a litter.

 

The difference is $$$$$$ Horses and cattle both generally sell for much more than most dogs. Yes I know some valuable NFC/NAFC blah, blah, blah, but in general the cost to do this in dogs is going to be more than it is worth. What deos a good competing horse go for these days?

 

Too many good combinations out there to choose a pup from for embro transplants to take place. But then again how long has Lean Mac been producing pups thanks to frozen semen.


Who knows,

Kevin

 

Where's Gunther to explain it?

 

Depends on your event. Right now you can pick up a well bred baby for $50 because the horse market is crap. The slaughter houses in the states being closed down and the only options are Canada and Mexico. So people are trying to sell them anyway they can.

 

I'd bet someone, somewhere is experimenting with this, but it's probably going to be hard to do. Dogs are reproductively soooo different from cows or horses - 2 cycles per year vs roughly every month, year-round breeders vs spring/summer breeders, optimal breeding time after ovulation vs before ovulation, multiple births vs single offspring.

But it would be an exciting tool for dog breeders - at least for those who have lots of $$$.

Marcia

 

A few years back, AKC actually approved someone to try and have a litter this way. Don't know if it ever happened.

The problem with embryo implants and dogs is that, unlike horses and cattle (and yes, I know they have twins, etc. but do not have "lityters" per se), is that dogs, having multiple embrys simultaneously, are pre-programmed to selectively reduce the size of their litters through resorption. What this means is, a bitch usually produces many more eggs, and these get fertilized, than she can actually carry. During and immediately post-implantation, she will resorb a certain number of embryos, to ensure that not *too* many are born. A friend is a repro vet, and says that in almost every breeding she has done ultrasound on, you can see one or more resorption sites.

What this means, as far as implanting fertilized embryos is, that you will have to do something to counteract this natural resorption process. Otherwise, the surrogate will just resorb the expen$ive implant$. I don't know how far along they have gotten in the research to counter this process. I expect, as the $$$ is not there, nobody is rushing to produce an anti-resorption drug for dogs.

Lisa

 

Talk about designer litters!! Could you imagine a litter of 8 pups each with a different set of parents?

 

i just think this is messing with "mother nature" tooo much.. Just because it can be done, do it mean we should??

maria

 

i just think this is messing with "mother nature" tooo much.. Just because it can be done, do it mean we should??

maria

And how do you feel about it in humans, cattle, horses......?

 

I think that the only "market" would be for owners of very highly placed competitive females, UNLESS the embryos could also be frozen for implanting at a later date. Then it could be a viable option for people wanting to freeze pups for the future from their derby females that will then be spayed for running in Open and Ams on a regular basis.

 

cyropreservation would be no problem. Slight reduction in numbers during thaw, but easily done

 

Here is one where I know of which I speak! I spent 26 years as assistant supt. of Auburn's Experiment Station at Camden, AL. I retired to raise Labs and set up Gator Point Kennel with my wife, Cleo.

About 12 or 14 years ago we had had excellent luck doing frozen semen/ surgical implant of frozen semen with Dr. Gary Greene in Folsom, La. Dr. Greene had had excellent results with embryo transfers with horses and I questioned the possibility of doing the same with dogs. He told me it had not been done successfully.

To make a long story a little shorter- we got permission from AKC and UKC, that should we be successful the resulting pups could be registered- they could.

Mary Howley donated a breeding (frozen) of Candelwoods Cash On the Line and Gator Points R-O-C 'N' Moon Pie was surgically implanted and when her eggs matured 12 eggs were flushed and frozen. Three months later another Gator point bitch that was in season had the eggs thawed and they were implanted in the uterine horns at the proper time. The bitch was then monitored by ultra sound, the eggs attached, but at the end of a week it was determined that they did not thrive.

Dr. Greene was correct in his first observation-it didn't work, but it satisfied Cleo and my curiosity. You don't know if you don't try. Maybe we would have had another "Taduh".

I thank Dr. Greene and their staff for their participation in this endeavor and for the help they have given Gator Point over the years by doing over 60 FS/SI breedings with only 2 misses, that's hard stats to beat! We will do another surgery Sunday morning (they have bred our dogs on Christmas and one on the 4th of July. Holidays don't bother them at all. Sorry this was as long as it was, but ti could have been a lot longer--I get enthusiastic about all this breeding stuff. AND BUBBA, at 79 this kind of breeding is the best I can do! Bill
________
VAPORIZERS

 

Here is one where I know of which I speak! I spent 26 years as assistant supt. of Auburn's Experiment Station at Camden, AL. I retired to raise Labs and set up Gator Point Kennel with my wife, Cleo.

About 12 or 14 years ago we had had excellent luck doing frozen semen/ surgical implant of frozen semen with Dr. Gary Greene in Folsom, La. Dr. Greene had had excellent results with embryo transfers with horses and I questioned the possibility of doing the same with dogs. He told me it had not been done successfully.

To make a long story a little shorter- we got permission from AKC and UKC, that should we be successful the resulting pups could be registered- they could.

Mary Howley donated a breeding (frozen) of Candelwoods Cash On the Line and Gator Points R-O-C 'N' Moon Pie was surgically implanted and when her eggs matured 12 eggs were flushed and frozen. Three months later another Gator point bitch that was in season had the eggs thawed and they were implanted in the uterine horns at the proper time. The bitch was then monitored by ultra sound, the eggs attached, but at the end of a week it was determined that they did not thrive.

Dr. Greene was correct in his first observation-it didn't work, but it satisfied Cleo and my curiosity. You don't know if you don't try. Maybe we would have had another "Taduh".

I thank Dr. Greene and their staff for their participation in this endeavor and for the help they have given Gator Point over the years by doing over 60 FS/SI breedings with only 2 misses, that's hard stats to beat! We will do another surgery Sunday morning (they have bred our dogs on Christmas and one on the 4th of July. Holidays don't bother them at all. Sorry this was as long as it was, but ti could have been a lot longer--I get enthusiastic about all this breeding stuff. AND BUBBA, at 79 this kind of breeding is the best I can do! Bill

AHA! So it was YOU!

I remember the AKC notice stated it was a Labrador bitch, but of course, they mentioned no names.

Sorry to hear it did not work out. I was kinda curious...

Lisa

 

There is also the potential to purposely split the embryos giving you more "opportunities" then what was originally available. Say for instance, you knew which embryo was going to be a female and it is that only one you have, the rest being male, then you can split the female zygote a couple of times to create "twins" and "triplets".

You seriously haven't heard of the Octo-mom???

Bill, who's the lucky momma and man?

 

The super females have a very limited impact on the breed relative to the males. Lean Mac's 400 litters with an average of 8/litter would be 3200 pups. Confine them to just the field-bred segment of the Lab breed and you can see why he has made such an impact. As great as he was as a sire he only sired a champion about once in 20 pups.

Now consider his female counterpart - Chica, Hattie, Lottie, Kweezie, Taydah, Nicki - you decide. If you started breeding them at 2 and stopped at 10-years-old and only had one litter per year, we're only talking about 64 pups. At Lean Mac's 20 pups per champion, it's remarkable how well these females have produced in only a few litters.

Rio Vista Farms here in San Antonio was performing embryo transfers 30-40 years ago on beef cows. When they started everything was done surgically - collection and implantation - and they had to maintain a herd of about 400 cows so that they would always have enough recipient cows in the same stage of heat to syncronize with the donor cows.

The times have sure changed. I haven't been around it for awhile now, but the last I knew donor cows were being flushed monthly to collect embryos without the need for surgery. The embryos are either frozen for later use of implanted in recipient cows that have been chemically syncronized with the donors. The breed of the recipient cow is immaterial by the way since the recipient has no genetic contribution to the offspring. She is just an incubator and a care giver. I remember one time at Rio Vista where they got 28 live births from just one collection of embryos. That is about 4 times what an average cow would produce in a lifetime in just one month.

If it were ever perfected in dogs the way it has been in cattle, you could breed and flush a top female 1-2 times per year and continue to campaign her on the trial circuit while some big Irish Wolfhound surogate mother took care of all the 15 pups at home. Then we would really start to see some influence from the Blue Hens of the breed.

 

If it were ever perfected in dogs the way it has been in cattle, you could breed and flush a top female 1-2 times per year and continue to campaign her on the trial circuit while some big Irish Wolfhound surogate mother took care of all the 15 pups at home. Then we would really start to see some influence from the Blue Hens of the breed.

All cows aren’t good flush candidates and in the bucking stock there are a few of us that think the nurturing of the recipient cow makes a major difference in the outcome of the calves i.e. a hot bred flush mother and a cold blooded recip cow make a luke warm bucking bull.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch

 

Exactly what I meant, thanks Ken

 

Since none of this is in the real world, lets breath rarified air. You could in theory have a different sire for each (you decide the number) of embryos, just like a sire does now. That could give you a potential of many sires to one dam output, like we see in reverse with Lean Mac (many dams to one sire). IF these (and the IF is caps) were considered of great value and bred down line like we do with the great sires now, you could see more influence genetically in the population. In theory...

 

That could give you a potential of many sires to one dam output, like we see in reverse with Lean Mac (many dams to one sire). In theory...

of even many sires AND many dams....LOL...

Juli

 

A couple years ago we used some 500 dollar sale barn cows to raise a couple calves from a 235,000 bull and 55,000 dollar cow. Think about that economic concept for a while! 2 years ago we raised a couple calves from an early 70's era bull and a current donor. The nitrogen tank sitting behind me is full of embryos and semen from several bulls and cows that have been dead for several years just waiting for a potential below average cow to raise the next above average offspring.

A couple of the neighbors have always wondered how we get great performing colored calves out of crappy all black cows and bulls, one of these days we might tell them the truth.

Several years ago when I was working for a cattle genetics company a lady brought a little toy dog in and wanted to know if they could flush her. The look on her face when she was asked just how she expected the main vet to get his hand up it's ass was priceless!!!

Genetics is kind of my thing.........I personally wish the potential to play with them in the dog world was greater than it currently is. The economic demand just isn't there like it is the the meat consumption world, but who knows what new toys the future will bring us!

 

This has my mind going??!!

on theory then, a mixed breed female could carry a purebred puppy that is implanted??

maria

 

This has my mind going??!!

on theory then, a mixed breed female could carry a purebred puppy that is implanted??

maria

Yes it could and guess what....it would still be a purebred puppy. Black human surrogate carrys a white embryo...white child and vice versa. The surrogate has zero genetic influence. Interesting take that I had not thought of. You could take a hot dog and use pound dogs to produce litters.....interesting and talk about the puppy mill you could have. Retrieve eggs from the bitch as often as needed and have a whole kennel full of surrogate mutts carrying litters......

 

Well, I personally would "Steer" clear of the whole thing..concept.
Unfortunately AQHA (American Quarter Horse Association) changed their rules several years ago...(Thanks to several High profile people's pushes)
So Now you can register up to 5 foals/embryo's a year taken out of one mare..and implanted in a surogate. Since those Popular Bloodlines (Petoboonsmal and Royal Blue Boon Lines) have become saturated. I have seen the prices drop to less than half of what they used to..and mix in the economic dip..so not sure of an exact %.
At any rate...I am always worried when "Man" tries to out think Mother Nature and of course capitalize on it.. But I guess that is the nature of the beast..and what keeps this world going around? And I agree with earlier statements of "in the dog world where you already are dealing with multiples" (Litters)you would want to bother...Now Cloning is more an issue here..IMO.

 

And I agree with earlier statements of "in the dog world where you already are dealing with multiples" (Litters)you would want to bother...Now Cloning is more an issue here..IMO.

I've never owned an NFC or FC/AFC female, let alone whelped one, but I've got a feeling if it was anywhere near economically feasible there would be a couple owners who would not mind eliminating the risk of losing their once in a lifetime dog while trying to produce offspring.

Having lost probably the best and most valuable donor cow I may ever own while having the ONLY natural calf she ever tried to have, I think I might be able to see where it could allow some genetics to be passed on at a higher rate than they would have been naturally without the risk and stress looming over ones head during pregnancy.

The beef industry is also taking advantage of cloning. Last year the Champion steer from I believe the Nation Western was cloned. For what it's worth the genetics that were once headed only for the dinner table are now available to breeders who feel the need to use them. How economically feasible this is I'm not sure, as there can potentially already be a couple hundred full siblings to him be born through the use on embryo transfer as it was before cloning.

 

I could see something like this paring down the number of bloodlines in certain breeds or subsets of breeds very quickly. After all, popular sires and frozen semen have done a pretty good job already. The saving grace is, they are bred to different females, so there is at least a 50/50 chance of some gene mixing going on there.

Now, frozen semen from NFC Wonderdog, and frozen eggs from NFC Superbitch, reduces the number of *different* bitches in the gene pool. Just implant the embryos from Wonderdog x Superbitch into 10, or 50, or 500 different bitches, and get 10 (or 50, or 500) identically-bred litters.

Maybe it's just as well this technology never took off.

Lisa

 

Yeccchhhh--this is a road I hope dog breeding never goes down but will likely happen.

If this happens in dogs, SOME breeders will maintain their purebred dog colony, training them and providing them with a generally happy life, and then maintain their "embryo incubation bitch" colony, which will consist of females who aren't trained or hunted but merely exist for puppy incubation and production. It would probably result in higher dog populations because SOME breeders would keep a bitch to run and train and hunt and another bitch to incubate and produce pups.

And, what impact would early socialization and "training" by the "incubator bitch" have on the pups? If the puppies may have the genetic material of two purebred lab parents, what impact would the first six weeks of, let's say, an Irish Terrier bitch as dam have on the litter?

As city folk moving to the country, my husband did the 'chicken raising' thing for a couple of years. We got a few Red hens and one Red rooster and then my husband found two Chinese Langshan (sp?) hens and a rooster. The breeds were separated in two different coops. When all the hens had chicks, we let them run around in the yard. The little red hens took their chicks around under bushes and shrubs and were very successful in trooping their broods around the yards and woods, keeping them safe and fed. The Chinese chickens stomped out in the middle of roads, parked right in the middle of the lawn, which overjoyed the hawks and owls, and generally rid themselves of all their chicks by being stupid. The little red hen chicks all lived to fall. The Chinese Langshan chicks died by being picked off by hawks/owls, following their mothers into the road, and just generally being stupid. The next year we bred the Chinese Langshan rooster to the red hens and the red hens all kept their chicks alive throughout the summer of free range yard feeding.

I would go to the extreme the other way. I think dogs and bitches should be required to have sired/whelped a litter via a natural breeding before they have any puppies from AI/frozen semen, etc.

I can remember a quote--either from some famous Field Spaniel/Sussex spaniel breeder (can't remember exactly because I'm older than dirt) -- about the males having a hard time doing the "funny toil."

Guess I'm old-fashioned but I really like the idea that if or when humans destroy their species, dogs will still exist.

Yes, I've done AIs, frozen sperm breedings, etc., but I really like the idea of protecting natural libidos, bitches without strictures, and the idea dogs, as a species, could live on even if my species is so stupid as to destroy itself.

Of course, as a child, I also hugged a Sugar Maple, and would lick the syrup off it's bark every spring so, yes, I have been known to hug trees. (The cool thing was you would get a really bitter bark taste so the syrup taste was even sweeter.)

Janean Marti
Ptarmigan Curly Coated Retreivers

 

The reason that we tried the embryo transfer is that we had a bitch that produced great, talented Chocolate pups. Twenty years earlier, at a field trial, we had entered one of only two chocolate dogs entered in the whole trial and a "gentleman" commented "Look at those fools coming on the trial grounds with a Chocolate dog, they ain't got no sense and they can't count to three". We felt that talent was not governed by coat color, but by heredity of talented dogs. (JMHO) We have tried to produce Chocolates that could count to three and over the years some of them have and FC-AFC Gator Points Sweet Potato Pie has led the way and so have some of her off spring. She was Marks first Lab to train and he sure did a terrific job.

Dr, Greene did their part at cost for us, Mary donated the semen and we only paid for the out of pocket costs of surgeries, but had it been a straight all paid for procedure it would have been too expensive for reproduction. Dogs are just different.

My 26 years dealing with research were just too much for my curiosity and I had to scratch that itch! It is scratched and I assure that when embryo transfer of dogs is done, someone else will do it. I'm old and Bank of America isn't doing too good as an investment. Bill
________
Vaporite solo digit instructions

 

If it were a perfect world, if I had a million dollars, and if they got the conception rate (and viable pups) to say 80%, here is what I would do. Oh Yeah, assume that I am working with a FC/AFC bitch or NFC/NAFC.

I would flush and fertilize 12 eggs with 12 DIFFERENT donors, if there were more than that, the rest would be labeled with name of sire(s) and frozen for possible later implantation.
I would then campaign each and every pup through derby and onto Open and Ams. keeping a detailed record on performance, training ability, marking, desire, etc... plus do all the health clearances.
Depending on how each combination performs within say a three year period, I would then flush and retrieve more eggs from the dam and use the stud(s) that produced the best pup(s).
Looking to find that one (or two! ) great "nicks" of all time.

 

If it were a perfect world......;-)

 

Yah, we would all live in Walgreens. At least thats what the commercials say!