Year-Long Phenotypical Study of Calves Derived From Different Assisted-Reproduction Technologies.

Assisted reproductive technologies play a major role in the cattle industry. An increase in the use of -derived embryos is currently being seen around the globe. But the efficiency and quality of the -derived embryos are substandard when compared to the production. Different protocols have been designed to overcome this issue, one of those being the use of reproductive fluids as supplementation to embryo culture media. In this study, -derived calves produced with reproductive fluids added to their embryo production protocol were followed for the first year of life pairwise with their control, produced by artificial insemination (AI), and their control, produced with standard supplementation in embryo production. The objective was to assess if any differences could be found in terms of growth and development as well as hematological and biochemical analytes between the different systems. All the analysed variables (physical, hematological, and biochemical) were within physiological range and very similar between calves throughout the entire experiment. However, differences were more evident between calves derived from standard production and AI. We concluded that the use of reproductive fluids as a supplementation to the embryo culture media results in calves with closer growth and development patterns to those born by AI than the use of bovine serum albumin as supplementation.