Cryopreservation of bovine embryos

The method of cryopreservation of embryos aged seven days, proposed for embryo transfer with cattle by Niemann (1985), was tested under production conditions on three cattle breeding farms and three experimental animal units. The number of donors was 128, and 467 intact embryos were obtained from them and were cryopreserved in semen straw. Following thawing, 455 were recovered, and 439 (96.5 percent) of these were suitable for transfer. A pregnancy rate of 49.0 percent was recorded from 412 transfers. This rate was differentiated by oestric cycle conditions of heifer recipients, which gave percentages of 46.0 among recipients of seven-day old embryos, 45.7 for eight-day recipients, and 65.8 for six-day recipients. Related to pregnancy results recorded on the same units from transfer of freshly collected seven-day embryos, the efficiency coefficient was 0.69 (550 fresh transfers = 65.4 percent and 222 cryopreserved transfers = 48.2 percent). The method is recommended for general field practice.