“Super cows” can produce an unusually high amount of milk
Chinese people scientists cloned successfully three “super cows» that they can produce an unusually high amount of milkstate media reported, hailing it as a breakthrough for China’s dairy industry to reduce its reliance on imported breeds.
The three calves, bred by scientists from the Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology, were born in Ningxia region, the state-run Ningxia Daily reported.
According to CNN they were cloned from highly productive cows from the Holstein-Friesian breed (Holstein Friesian), which comes from the Netherlands. The selected animals are able to they produce 18 tons of milk per yearthe 100 tons of milk during their lifetime.
She is nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk produced by an average cow in the United States in 2021according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The first of the cloned calves was born on Dec. 30 by caesarean section due to its relatively large size of 56.7 kilograms (120 pounds), an official in Wulin city in Ningxia told state-run Technology Daily.
Scientists made 120 cloned embryos from the ears of high-yielding cows and placed them in surrogate cows, according to Technology Daily.
Jin Yaping, the project’s chief scientist, called the birth of the “super cows” a “breakthrough” that allows China to preserve the best cows “in an economically feasible way,” the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.
Only five out of 10,000 cows in China can produce 100 tons of milk in their lifetime, making them a valuable breeding resource.
70% of China’s dairy cows are imported from abroad, according to the Global Times.
“It will take us two to three years to build a herd of more than 1,000 super cows as a solid foundation to deal with China’s dependence on foreign dairy cows,” Jin told the newspaper.
In many countries, including the United States, farmers breed clones of conventional animals to add desirable traits, such as high milk production or disease resistance.
China has made significant progress in animal cloning in recent years.
Last year, a Chinese animal cloning company created the world’s first cloned arctic wolf.
In 2017, Chinese scientists said they had produced cloned cattle with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis, a disease that strikes cattle in many countries.
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