Artificial Insemination

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Artificial Insemination

• GCSE Module 14 Biotechnology
• Lesson 11 -13

Ouch!
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Lesson objectives

• You will understand how cattle semen is collected
  from genetically suitable bulls and introduced
  into suitable cows.
• You will understand the advantages of artificial
  insemination over natural breeding.

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Artificial insemination very simply means taking
sperm from the best male animal and putting into
the best female animal. It is used extensively
in modern farming to produce best diary and beef
cattle and in the breeding of race horses.
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Artificial insemination

• Semen is collected from a prize bull. It is then
  diluted, frozen and stored.
• It can then be inserted directly into a fertile
  cow or super-ovulation embryo transfer can be
  used
• This technique involves the prize cow being given
  hormones to increase ovulation. Eggs are
  collected.
• .An egg from the prize cow is fertilised in vitro
  by sperm from a prize bull.
• An embryo is implanted into another cow.
• Surrogate cow then gives birth to calf.

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Advantages and disadvantages

• Use of proven stock quality
• Frozen semen can be transported globally and
  stored for many years
• Cost effective an straw of semen is 15 while the
  cost of a Holstein bull is around 10,000. A bull
  is expensive to rear, relatively unproductive,
  vulnerable to disease or accident and may be
  infertile.
• Flexibility high yield dairy cows can be crossed
  with dairy bull semen to create more higher yield
  cows.

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Safety bulls are aggressive Main disadvantage is
that the same alleles keep appearing in the
population so there is a loss of diversity in the
gene pool (many genes are lost). So a disease
could wipe out an entire population if resistant
alleles have been lost.
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Activities
1. Produce a set of annotated diagrams explaining
how semen is collected,stored and finally
inserted into a cow during artificial
insemination.
2. List the advantages of artificial selection
over natural breeding. Use the information
provided in the previous slides as a starting
point and then supplement from your own research.
Then use MSN Messenger to discuss your list with
a partner in the class. Bring your list to the
next lesson for display.
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Dating game
Use the following website sire selector to
mate an imaginary herd of ten milk cows with the
semen from a bull or bulls of your choice.
Produce a family tree of the crosses and provide
information on projected milk yield for the
likely calves produced. You have only a limited
budget of 150 to spend and must produce the new
herd with the highest projected milk yield
possible. Remember a cow will usually only
produce 1 calf at a time and it can be either
male or female (11 ratio). Lay out your family
tree with projected milk yields on an Excel
spreadsheet for display next lesson.
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Plenary
Copy and answer these questions 1. What would
you do as a farmer if a calf when fully grown
into a cow failed to give the projected milk
yield? 2. What would happen to the male calves
produced during the crossings (remember 11ratio
of males to females would occur)? 3. What
advantages does artificial insemination have over
a natural breeding programme for the farmer? 4.
How could super-ovulation embryo transfer
further improve the selection of your milk herd?