India News | Maha: Surrogate Mother Cows to Deliver Calves at Farmer's Firm Through IVF

Pune, Oct 4 (PTI) Dayaram Thengil, a 36-year-old farmer from the Satara district in Maharashtra, is excited to welcome over half a dozen calves which will be delivered by six surrogate mother cows from his farm, impregnated through In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) technique using embryos of a Gir cow named 'Samadhi'.

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The NGO claimed they have so far succeeded in establishing 74 IVF pregnancies from 'Samadhi' in a short span of 12 months and target to reach 100 IVF pregnancies in the next two months.

"The 10 IVF embryos of this elite Gir donor 'Samadhi' were transferred in the Holstein Friesians crossbred recipient cows of Thengil's farm located in Tamkhada village in the Phaltan tehsil. Out of these 10 recipient cows, 8 are confirmed as pregnant. The semen used for IVF was that of the famous Brazilian Gir bull namely Espanto," Dr Shyam Zawar, the chief scientist at JK Trust's JK BovaGenix who led the entire process, said on Monday.

Out of these 74 IVF pregnancies, 30 IVF calves have already been born at the doorsteps of farmers in various parts of the country including Pune, Ahmednagar, and Satara districts in Maharashtra.

"The process involved is a highly advanced technology which requires high precision and accuracy. It is similar to test-tube babies in humans," Zawar said.

Explaining the procedure, he said a specially-designed mobile laboratory, the ET-IVF Van, is taken to farmer's doorsteps, where oocytes, or immature eggs, are collected from the donor cow.

"The collected aspirated oocytes are fertilized with the semen of high pedigree bulls, which resulted in the production of good quality viable embryos and then these embryos are transferred fresh into the recipient cow," he explained.

Meanwhile, Thengil told PTI that he was very happy and excited that the entire process of IVF had taken place at his doorstep.

"We were happy to witness the entire process of IVF and now out of eight cows, two cows delivered one male calf each and in the next two to three days, the remaining cows will also be delivering calves," said Thengil, who is sarpanch of Tamkhada village.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)