Need Milk? Get Yourself A Supercow.

GM OOOO writes "Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the birth of three 'supercows.' Interesting thing here, besides the potential for milk, is the fact this was done via selctive breeding and genetic selection via embryonic implantation -- not adding the gene of a sea cucumber of something to modify it to produce as it does now. Supercows - kinda reminds me of the Mootrix movie now (FEAR)."

Comments

(Yawn) Nothing to see here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

As the article says, all they did was ship embryos from champion Canadian milk cows to New Zealand and implant them in host mother cows there. A fancy way to save on air freight over shipping the calves.

Actually, there is one more detail that's probably relevant. New Zealand is free of a number of livestock diseases that bother the rest of the world (honeybees, particularly) and has extremely stringent animal quarantine regulations.

It is possible that frozen embryos were considered to be less likely to be hiding any diseases than a full-grown calf and so the entire business was basically a way of satisfying quarantine.

But there is absolutely nothing magic about the ancestry or genetics of the cows.