05/03/07 Cloned animals

Cloned Animals How many times have you heard, I sure wish I could raise a whole herd like that animal? I'm Jeff Keane and I'll be back in one minute to tell you about raising a whole herd that does look alike. I think the goal of just about every commercial animal breeding program is attaining a level of uniformity. Cattle breeders strive for a herd of cattle that look alike and more importantly that perform alike in traits such as milking ability, weight gain and carcass characteristics. Well, there is a way to obtain this desired uniformity consistently. It's a technique called cloning. I'm sure since 1997 and the successful highly publicized cloning of Dolly, the sheep, just about everyone is familiar with the term. As the neighbors and we were returning from a bull-buying trip, I was re-reading some of the statistics of the new bulls and wondering what next year's calf crop would look like with the addition of these new bulls. With cloning, I would already know  the calf crop would look like the animal that was cloned. While this technique, if available and affordable on a commercial level might provide that elusive uniformity and be more profitable, it would take away the excitement and mystique of seeing the calves produced from natural mating. Cloning also stops genetic improvement since cloned animals will always be the same and there seems to be a negative attitude about eating cloned beef. For now, I'll take the individuality of the animals produced by the mating a chosen bull with a certain cow to produce what should be a superior calf. I'm Jeff Keane.