A team of zoologists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is poised to be a game-changer for subsistence farmers in Tanzania: cows that produce up to 20 times more milk than native breeds.
The effort, published in Animal Borders, combines the milk-producing prowess of Holsteins and Jerseys with the heat, drought and disease resistance of Gyrs, a native cattle breed common in tropical countries. Five generations of crossbreeding produce cattle capable of producing 10 liters of milk per day under typical Tanzanian management, surpassing the average yield of half a liter of indigenous cattle.
After raising the first of these calves in the United States, project manager Matt Wheeler, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Illinois’ College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), is ready to bring embryos to Tanzania.
“High-yielding Girolandos – Holstein-Gyr crosses – are common in Brazil, but because of endemic diseases there, these cattle cannot be exported to most other countries,” Wheeler said. “We wanted to develop a healthy herd in the United States so we could export its genetics all over the world. »
Wheeler’s team plans to implant 100 Holstein-Gyr or Jersey-Gyr mixed-blood embryos into native cattle at two Tanzanian sites in March. The resulting calves will be inseminated over successive generations to create “purely synthetic” cattle with five-eighths Holstein or Jersey genetics and three-eighths Gyr genetics. Unlike Girolandos, pure Jersey-Gyr synthetics do not yet have an official name.
Pure synthetics are worth the time and effort; once the five-eighths/three-eighths genetics are established, they are locked. In other words, calves from successive matings will maintain the same genetic ratio.
“The idea is to maintain the disease and pest resistance associated with dairy production so that when breeding, those traits don’t separate,” Wheeler said. “This is going to be the challenge in developing countries; Until you get to purely synthetic generation, there will always be the temptation to breed with the bull, thus losing the effect.
Wheeler’s team, including co-author Moses Ole-Neselle of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is committed to carrying out this effort. Although developing the embryos took years of painstaking work, they didn’t stop there. The team held its first online course on bovine assisted reproductive technology last summer, attended by 12 participants from Tanzania. And there’s more to come.
“It was important to start training the first group of veterinarians and graduate students to adopt the technology, so that when we get there, it won’t be a foreign thing,” Wheeler said. “The Tanzanian government wants this training and these student exchanges. We will continue to invest in this program for as long as it takes.
Wheeler recognizes that the best genetics and the most comprehensive training will be of no use if the plan does not take into account the local culture. With advice from collaborators such as the Tanzania Livestock Research Institute and Teresa Barnes, director of the Illinois Center for African Studies, Wheeler has already adjusted his strategy to accommodate the preferences of local Maasai herders.
“We learned that some Maasai clans strongly prefer smaller red cattle, so the Holstein crosses we did initially, which were large and black, weren’t going to work,” he said. “I had to start again with jerseys, which set us back a bit. It will be worth it if they are better accepted.
But some aspects of Tanzanian livestock management will need to change to realize the full potential of improved genetics. For example, Wheeler said nomadic Maasai herders often graze livestock 25 miles from their enclosures each day, limiting the energy available for milk production.
Although the project is in its early stages, it represents a step toward more climate-resilient animal agriculture, the subject of the special issue of Animal Frontiers in which Wheeler’s article is published. Although Wheeler’s current priority is strengthening food security in the Global South, where climate change is hitting hardest, he said the same technology could be used to protect livestock from climate change here in the United States. And in the world. In other words, tropical genetics could be inserted into our already high-yielding cattle to better withstand heat, drought and disease.
“These cattle would work very well in Mexico, Texas, New Mexico and California. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about it now,” Wheeler said. “People don’t usually think that far ahead, but I predict people will look back and realize that having tropical genetics earlier would have been a good thing.”
