A National Institutes of Health project, led by UI animal scientist Troy Ott examining early bovine pregnancy stages underpins a new product that holds great promise for dairy producers.

Both the costs and environmental impacts of dairying may diminish as a result of Ott’s research which helped lead to the development of a new reproductive management tool by AspenBio, a Littleton, CO company. As the company fine-tuned the product early this fall, a major agricultural products corporation negotiated rights to distribute the product as SURBRED, a bovine pregnancy test kit. The new method could help dairies become more efficient by reducing the amount of time between pregnancies for dairy cows, and so the amount of time when they are not producing milk.

“The key in this technology we licensed is being able to determine which cows are not pregnant,” Ott said.

Ott’s research has focused on the production of a protein produced in the mother in response to early pregnancy. If a cow is bred and does not produce the protein within three weeks, a pregnancy was not established. The test, done by the producer, is simple and relies on a small blood sample that is easily taken from the tail vein.

The test will be particularly useful for dairy producers who use artificial insemination and synchronized breeding programs. In pregnant cows, a protein is produced 15 days after breeding. The company recommends testing the cow 18 days after breeding. Those that are not pregnant can be scheduled for artificial insemination within the 21-day reproductive cycle. Presently, dairy producers detect pregnancy by manually manually palpating a cow’s uterus during the fifth to eighth week of gestation. This method is not reliable until after 30 days into the pregnancy and is known to cause some embryo losses.

The ability to schedule the rebreeding within the first cycle reduces the time the dairy must feed an unproductive milk cow by at least three weeks. At an average cost of more than $2 per day for feed and with dairies of hundreds to thousands of cows now the standard in Idaho and elsewhere, the savings generated by the new product could be substantial. There may be environmental benefits as well. Dairies might choose to trim their herds because they could maintain production levels with fewer cows.

Ott’s initial discovery that the protein could be detected in the bloodstream occurred soon after he began studying gene expression in the uterus during early pregnancy. Scientists have long known that a group of interferon-stimulated genes is expressed in the uterus during early pregnancy, but it was widely accepted that this was a local effect in the uterus that did not extend to gene expression in the peripheral blood. Ott’s research, published last summer in the Journal of Endocrinology, was the first to demonstrate that one of these interferon-induced genes, Mx, was strongly expressed in these blood cells during early pregnancy. The finding implicated this family of genes as potential targets for identifying failed pregnancies

Ott’s research receives funding from both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health because of its implications for both livestock and humans. AspenBio, which has committed to further funding support for Ott’s research, approached the Idaho Research Foundation after the foundation filed for patent protection on Ott’s discovery. SURBRED is expected to reach market later this year.

“AspenBio is looking forward to building this relationship with the University of Idaho. We see a lot we can accomplish together,” said J.W. Roth, the company’s director of new business development.

Dairy producers will not be the only beneficiaries of the new test. The university will share in the company’s revenues through the efforts of the Idaho Research Foundation, a non-profit technology transfer corporation located in Moscow. Ronald J. Satterfield, director of technology licensing, said this has been an especially rewarding project.

“Finding an opportunity to move promising technology from the university to a small, energetic company is always fulfilling,” Satterfield said.