Welcome to the first edition of the Bova-Tech Newsletter and thank you for subscribing. We look forward to sharing some articles and news with you along with featured embryos for sale.   If there is anything you would like us to write about please send us a message and we will feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

Hopefully everybody’s spring program is going well as the weather has been surprisingly mild. These warmer temperatures have made it very helpful for any on farm work we have done in the last few weeks with implants and flushing.

There have been lots of great changes happening with Bova-Tech.   In November we moved from Crossfield to north of Cochrane and the new facility is outstanding.  If you would like to bring your cattle to our facility, either a donor cow for flushing or recipients to implant, please call us to make an appointment and discuss your options.  As always the on farm work has been, and continues to be a big part of our services, we welcome all inquiries for on-farm work.  We also have access to recipient herds so our clients can implant their embryos and buy the pregnant recips or weaned calves in the fall.

This spring we also welcomed a new team member, Sheila as our office manager and Lisa moved into the position of International Embryo sales and marketing. We also launched a new website with pages of information about flushing and implants along with a section dedicated to our dams / sires and our catalogue of current matings.  Please check it out and let us know what you think @ www.bova-tech.com. We continue to grow with Facebook and Instagram and welcome all likes, follows and shares. Please tag us in your photos if we are on farm with you!! 

Our flushing program continues to be successful for the domestic and international ET programs.  We have had some incredible success and the opportunity to work with some really good donors on farm this year and recently recovered 40 embryos from a donor flush in April.  We are also happy to report International embryo shipments have had over 80% success once implanted into recipient cows. Eastern Europe has done exceptional work selecting and managing their recipient herds.

Recip Selection

The greatest expense in any ET program is the recips. It is extremely important to maximize pregnancy rates in your recipients and produce higher percentage of ET pregnancies carried to full term in your herd.

Selection of recipients is one of the most important aspects of any ET program. In most cases the implanting of embryos involves a financially valuable genetic material that, in order to have a successful program, is required to have good quality, well managed recipients. Estrous synchronization protocols are very useful but they cannot replace good management. Feeding and vaccination protocols are very important areas that often are neglected.

Selection:

1. Cows 3 to 8 years old make good recipients once they have a good calving record. Cows will be better suited when transferring embryos of relatively high birth weights. In general, cows have more milk than heifers, an important factor to consider when they have to raise an embryo calf.
2. Heifers are good recipients providing they’ve reached their breeding weight (around 65-70% of mature weight) and are cycling. Avoid embryos with large EPD’s for birth weights in heifers.
3. 1st calvers are still growing and are under more stress than the rest of the herd due to the fact that they have to raise a calf.  For these reasons 1st calvers can be difficult to get pregnant, if they are under intensive management and receiving enough good quality feed they can be used as recipients.
4. Use fertile animals.  Cows with calves at foot that have no history of calving problems, and are open not because they fail to conceive by AI or natural breeding, make good recipients. Retain animals successfully used previously as recipients. Do not use recipients that have been prepared unsuccessful twice before.
5. Animals with temperament problems should be removed from the program.
6. Select animals that maintain or are gaining body condition, an ideal score of 2.5-3 is preferred at the time of transferring the embryos.

Management:

1. Cows need to be at least 60 days post-calving, when possible, it is recommended to wait a little longer (75-80 days).
2. Recipients need to be adapted and kept on the same feeding program for 6 weeks before getting implanted and 8 weeks after. It is not advisable to move recipients from a dry lot to a pasture with lush grass immediately after implanting. If for some reason feed needs to be changed, do it gradually over a period of 4 weeks. Keep recipients under the same management conditions for as long as possible.
3. Maintain recipients on a good nutritional plan throughout the year, providing supplements with vitamins A, D and E as well as a good mineral balance with particular attention to selenium. Protein tabs can be a good way to supplement your cows.
4. Recipient identification is essential, tags must be easy to read and whenever possible put tags in both ears.
5. Vaccination protocols must be up to date, pay special attention when vaccinating recipients and/or calves nursing recipients with modified live vaccines for BVD and IBR. Do not vaccinate 40 days prior to the implanting date. Consult with your veterinarian if some modifications need to be made to the vaccination protocols.
6. Do pregnancy diagnosis on every recipient before getting them in an ET program.
7. We do not recommend AI for recipients that show heat after receiving an embryo, there is a chance that some of these cows are pregnant. Using a bull is safest.
8. Move recipients slowly and keep them calm at all times while they are getting used to the handling system.​

Preparing Recipients:

1. Embryos are implanted 6 to 8 days after recipients have had a heat, we can implant embryos in cows that have either natural or synchronized heats. For practical purposes, most of the time recipients get synchronized to implant embryos on a determined date; many times they are prepared to coincide with the flushing of the donors.
2. There are many different protocols used to synchronize estrus (heats) in recipient cows, each with certain advantages to it. These protocols require the use of drugs such as prostaglandins (Estrumate, Lutalyse), GnRH (Fertiline, Cystorelin, Factrel) and progesterone (CIDR).
3. How to apply CIDRs. It is recommended to rinse and disinfect your CIDR applicator between cows.
4. The use of recipients can be optimized by performing an early pregnancy diagnosis around 21 to 23 days after being implanted. Cows that show heat around 14 days after being implanted can be tested by ultrasound and re-implanted 7 days later if they are open. Cows that did not show heat can be “preg checked” and the open ones can be re-synchronized immediately to be implanted in 16 days. It is not recommended to use cows as recipients if they do not get pregnant after a second implant.

Embryos for sale

We have a full catalogue available on our website www.bova-tech.com/catalogue.  Please contact us for details on national or international shipping and pricing of our embryos.  Please check out the link below to see the current matings that we have available.