Chinese scientists have successfully cloned 3 “super cows” that produce an unusually high amount of milk

Chinese scientists have successfully cloned 3 “super cows” that produce an unusually high amount of milk.

Chinese scientists have successfully cloned three cows that can produce an unusually high amount of milk, state media reported. According to researchers, these cloned cows are capable of producing 50% more milk than the average American cow.

Scientists sampled tissues from cows across China and used what's called the somatic cell nuclear transfer method, which involves taking the nucleus from a body cell of the animal to be cloned and transferring it into a donated egg cell. Then embryos were placed inside surrogate cows.

That is nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk an average cow in the United States produced in 2021, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The first of the cloned calves was born on December 30 by cesarean section due to its relatively large size of 56.7 kilograms (120 pounds), an official in the city of Wulin in Ningxia told the state-run Technology Daily.

The scientists made 120 cloned embryos from the ear cells of the highly productive cows and placed them in surrogate cows, according to the Technology Daily.

In many countries, including the United States, farmers breed clones with conventional animals to add desirable traits, such as high milk production or disease resistance, into the gene pool.

China has made significant progress in animal cloning in recent years.

Last year, a Chinese animal cloning company created the world's first cloned Arctic wolf.

In 2017, Chinese scientists said they produced cloned cattle with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis, a risk to cattle in many countries.

The cloning experiment began last year at the Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology in Shaanxi, China. The three calves, bred by scientists, were born in the Ningxia region in the weeks leading up to the Lunar New Year on January 23. These calves were cloned from highly productive cows from the Holstein Friesian breed, which originated in the Netherlands. According to Chinese state media, the chosen animals are capable of producing 18 tons of milk per year, which is nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk an average cow in the United States produces.

Jin Yaping, the lead scientist called this a birth of ‘super cows.’ Furthermore, he said, this breakthrough has great significance for China to concentrate and preserve in an economically feasible way the very best cows in the country, and ‘super cows’ are efforts to revitalize its agricultural sector with breeder animals.

For dairy cows, China is 70% reliant on overseas purchases. According to Global Times, China has roughly 6.6 million cows, however, only about 5 in 10,000 such cattle in China are highly productive.