With a busy week here in Madison for the 2021 World Dairy Expo, we are thankful for our employees, the exhibitors, and especially our sponsors. Having great sponsors allows us to provide you with results and photos from shows in all areas. We would like to thank one of our premier sponsors, Trans Ova Genetics. For over forty years, Trans Ova’s vision has been to multiply success and they are doing just that.
Trans Ova provides breeders industry-leading reproductive technologies to extend their genetic opportunities. They have satellite sites internationally at farms, ranches, and businesses. These sites are great opportunities to allow breeders, who are not close to the Trans Ova center, to have access to their “toolbox of services.” The “toolbox” contains IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization), embryo transfer, exporting of embryos, sorting for sexed semen, donor housing, various recipient options, and even genetic preservation in the form of cloning. Trans Ova wanted to shine a spotlight on one of their satellite sites, Brodhead Veterinary Medical Center in Brodhead, Wisconsin.
Brodhead, becoming a satellite site for Trans Ova in 2013, was founded in 1951. They work with Trans Ova to provide their services and also provide a number of other services in addition to the ones listed above. The majority of their large animal clientele is dairy cattle, however, they are a mixed practice and have an extensive small animal clientele also. As a satellite site, Trans Ova has partnered with Brodhead to provide IVF services to cattle producers in the general area. Trans Ova sends out a team of a vet and an embryologist to the sites to perform the procedures. In Brodhead, that team comes out to the facility every two weeks. In addition to the specialists from Trans Ova, Brodhead currently has forty-two employees and eight full-time large animal veterinarians. Brodhead is also expanding! The medical center recently purchased Monroe Veterinary Service and will be merging the doctors and staff from both facilities.
The center was picked as a satellite site for Trans Ova due to its large, indoor chute facility. This allows for a clean, organized, under-cover area for the procedures to be done. The IVF process is creating embryos from oocytes by fertilizing them in a petri dish with semen. The oocytes are first collected from ovaries of the donor cow through ultrasound-guided follicular aspiration. Then, conventional, sexed, or reverse sorted semen is used to fertilize the oocytes after about 24 hours. After the fertilization process, the oocytes then develop in an incubator for around seven days. The final destination for the viable embryos is to be implanted into the recipient cows. In this short period of time, large amounts of embryos from your top animals are produced. This increases the genetic impact of those individuals by the multiples and adds value to your herd. More information on Trans Ova and Brodhead can be found on their websites!
With that being said, Brodhead Veterinary Medical Center is more than qualified to handle and work with you on your Trans Ova needs. The staff is easy to work with and extremely knowledgeable, and with a great facility, anything is possible! Special thank you to Kari Grossen for giving an insight into Brodhead. Again, we would like to say thank you to Trans Ova Genetics for being a premier sponsor of Cowsmopolitan Inc. and for allowing the industry to “multiply their success!”
Written by: Katelyn Poitras