Pity the bull calf born on a dairy farm.
His heifer sisters grow up to be the new generation of milkers, kept in production with straws of semen from prized sires.
The meat from his beef cattle cousins is far superior to whatever he can pack on in a feedlot.
And now, a scientist from the University of Guelph in Ontario has come up with a system that could keep the bull calf off dairy farms altogether.
The gender of a calf is determined by sperm. Using the tools of molecular biology, Stan Blecher found a way to separate “male” sperm from “female” sperm.
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This isn’t the first time science has found a way to select gender. But investors in Gensel Biotechnologies Inc. are betting millions of dollars Blecher’s method is more affordable, practical and accurate than techniques that have gone before.
Gensel is a company spun off from the university to attract financing and do the work needed to take sperm-sexing from petri dish to the farm.
The University of Guelph owns a little less than 10 percent of the company, and will receive royalties should the technology take off, in exchange for the years of research Stan Blecher put into the concept.
Blecher and his son are also part-owners, along with investors from a venture capital company and people who trade Gensel’s shares on the Alberta Stock Exchange.
It will take at least three more years of research to find out whether this technology makes it to the farm.
Blecher has worked on the technique for more than 12 years. He declined a request for an interview.
But Gawen explained it arose through work done in the late 1980s on cloning embryos. Similar work in Scotland led to the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep.
“It was curiosity sort of research, where it was something that really interested him but he hadn’t had the need to get others involved,” said Gawen.
Blecher hypothesized proteins on the surface of the sperm cells and embryos of mammals would differ from male to female.
He found a way to isolate and purify the gender-related proteins. Then he produced an antibody to one of the proteins, and added it to free-swimming sperm.
“He found that half of the sperm appeared to clump up,” said Gawen.
He filtered off the free sperm and used it to fertilize eggs. He produced embryos from the eggs, and found more than 90 percent of them were male.
“We’ve got a long way to go to confirm a lot of this and to identify the proteins very specifically,” as well as the antibodies, said Gawen.
Sorting them out
Blecher isn’t yet sure whether he will find a way to ‘unclump’ the female-conceiving sperm, or find an antibody to disable the male-conceiving sperm, leaving female sperm running free.
But Gensel’s vision is to mass-produce the antibodies and sell them to artificial insemination units and semen companies.
The president of IBG Inc., a dairy and beef embryo export company based in Gunton, Man., said he’s excited about the new technology.
“It’s a great way of target-marketing different genetic bloodlines,” said James Bezan.
Cost of the technology will be critical.
A spokesperson for a dairy genetics company owned by Canadian producers said depending on milk prices, dairy farmers would likely be prepared to pay some premium to guarantee a heifer calf.
“Would it double the value of semen? I don’t think so,” said Herman deBoer, business development manager for Semex Alliance’s European division.
“If it is a successful technology, it will very quickly become commonplace, also among our competitors.”
The technology will have to be practical enough to be done on lab benches as part of the routine at artificial insemination centres, said deBoer.
Gensel would have to demonstrate it works at least 90 percent of the time, he added. And the sexed sperm can’t have any detrimental effects on conception rates.
“If the fertility of sexed semen goes back by, say, 20 percent because of this particular process, that’s not desirable,” deBoer said.
But if the technology is viable, it will leave a significant mark on the animal breeding industry, he said.
“They potentially have the goose that lays the golden eggs,” said deBoer.
