Episode 30: PCOS Round Table

Well, I guess right off the get-go, I guess we can just kind of define the theory itself.

Uh...

And I know we keep bringing it back to PCOS, which honestly, David, I think hearing a little bit, if you can actually define what PCOS is for us guys.

Yeah,

absolutely.

But I know when it comes to cattle, what we've seen, like we were saying as observation, but across all these herds all over the world, that for the guys that have done embryo work, we've just seen that our cows tend to produce less eggs.

Yeah.

I know we can dive into it more here in a little while, but that's not what has been a popular deal, or lower egg production hasn't been something you brag about.

And I remember, Grant, when you sort of brought that up early with me when you asked me when we had our first discussions about our success rates in artificial breeding as far as IVF and ET.

That, you know, when you sort of laughed when I said, well, we, you know, we just don't have big numbers, so it's not worth the travel for a vet to come and do what we do.

And, you know, I guess I had that epiphany of relating it straight back to Mother Nature.

that cattle and animals are far smarter than we are mother nature's smarter than we are and it knows if an animal like a frog or something to that extent has a low success rate of getting things through to adulthood their progeny they throw as many things against the wall as many eggs in that pond as possible to hope that a few of them are going to survive whereas we look at animals you know the the big five in africa for instance they know that a massive percentage of their progeny are going to make it so they only have you know they only have one calf every couple of years um because again mother nature dictates that we see it here in australia um i think kangaroos are a good are good at analogy for it because they can dictate the sex based on the season and and i think that again with humans try to outsmart mother nature and it usually comes back to bite us in the ass

yeah so what are some of the real world observations of this what inspired the thought i know you touched on the low egg count and how it's not a braggable moment can we go a little further in that

Yeah.

Um, no, what does guys, a lot of us breeders have seen in the spa sires group, which, uh, I guess not surprisingly, a lot of them don't do embryo work that they just do natural calving only.

Uh, but for the guys that have dabbled into the embryo work, uh, I guess the overall, uh, The characteristics or the phenomena that we see is that these naturally fertile cows, which we'll get into fertility in a little bit, but the naturally fertile cows that are capable of giving you a calf every year or every 12 months, that they'll have a lower overall production of eggs.

But specifically with IVF, we'll see that they have a low oocyte production.

and they call it the development rate, but what percentage of those eggs turn into viable embryos after a week of incubating, that that's a higher development rate.

And then thirdly, the pregnancy rate itself, that these cows, if they're naturally fertile, their embryos are going to be more fertile and they'll have a higher pregnancy rate.

And I think that's where a lot of embryologists have seen that if a cow comes in and cranks out 80 oocytes, 100 oocytes, whatever that is, that they'll tend to have a lower development rate.

So yeah, they might have 120 eggs, but as a percentage, maybe 20 to 25 become embryos.

Now we're just throwing rough numbers out there, but of those embryos themselves, when they go and transfer them to receipts, the pregnancy rate is going to be a lot lower.

So instead of hitting like a 60% preg rate, they're going to be cruising down at 15, 10 to 20% preg rate.

So I know a lot of embryo companies, they don't, I think a lot of it's the disconnect, but they don't have a, they're not really studying the actual fertility of the cow itself.

But anyway, I know that was rabbit hole there.