Last April the rest of the frozen embryos that were imported last August were implanted. The recipient animals were in good condition, so Lonny was optimistic that they would have good success. He was concerned when he found a small amount of ice in two of the goblets containing the embryos, which was only a shadow of what was to come. It appears that someone opened the tanks with the embryos and poured some water in, killing all of the embryos. Consequently, there were no pregnancies from any of those embryos. Fortunately during that time Lonny had left one goblet of embryos at the Holeta research center, which were untainted, resulting in two pregnancies.
Lonny started the project with 130 embryos and ended up with 13 pregnancies. This statistics are terrible by US standards but not bad for Ethiopia where ET has been a significant challenge. Five calves were born from those embryos. They are two months old and doing very well. The rest will be born between now and January.
At the Kokosa property the animals are doing well. They have been milking Boran cows for two months. They are up to ten cows now and should have about 40 by the end of the year. The production has been low at one to two liters per cow, per day. With better management and feed this should continue to improve. Most of this milk is churned into butter to sell in the Shashamene area.
There was a scary brush with Foot and Mouth Disease but Abera and his staff tackled the problem quickly and efficiently.
They have now started to buy lean bulls and fatten them on the property. They have three different breeds: Boran, Arsi and Arsi X Holstein cross and will see which group does the best growing and in the market.