The day may not be far off when most U.S. cows, however familiar they may be with the habits of bees and flowers, will never see a bull. So predicted Dr. J. W. Bartlett of New Jersey’s College of Agriculture, announcing that, by artificial insemination with sperm of outstanding bulls, his group has produced calves which grow up to be cows giving twice as much milk as ordinary animals.
Artificial animal insemination is at least 600 years old—the Arabians used it in horse-breeding in the 14th Century and the Russians have used it on a big scale in cattle-raising since the late Tsars. But there has been little precise data on the results. Six years ago Dr. Bartlett and his group launched the first carefully controlled test of the economic advantages of artificial cow-breeding. It now includes 1,800 dairymen and 14,000 cows.
The experimenters used bulls of superior milk-producing strains and a standardized technique to produce “artificial” calves. They found that a test group of 120 “artificial” cows produced 9% more milk and 14% more butterfat than their mothers, which were all above-average producers. Their average production—8,557 lbs. of milk in 305 days—was nearly twice the U.S. average per cow. Dr. John H. Beattie, technician in charge of Bartlett’s group No. 1 at Clinton, N.J., has said that a single servicing from a bull, diluted with egg yolk and sodium phosphate, can be used to inseminate 100 cows. Thus one good bull can service 5,000 cows a year (as compared with 50 by natural mating).
To Dr. Bartlett and his colleagues, these results forecast a germinal revolution in U.S. dairy farming. Most dairymen have fewer than 20 cows, cannot afford to keep or hire a superior bull. Dr. Bartlett believes that artificial insemination, with a few great bulls fathering most of the nation’s calves, is economically inevitable (already nearly one-tenth of all New Jersey calves are so bred). One incidental bene fit, he observes, is that bulls, which almost invariably become vicious after their fourth or fifth year, will be largely eliminated as a menace to life & limb in the U.S. countryside.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- L.A. Fires Show Reality of 1.5°C of Warming
- Behind the Scenes of The White Lotus Season Three
- How Trump 2.0 Is Already Sowing Confusion
- Elizabeth Warren’s Plan for How Musk Can Cut $2 Trillion
- Why, Exactly, Is Alcohol So Bad for You?
- How Emilia Pérez Became a Divisive Oscar Frontrunner
- The Motivational Trick That Makes You Exercise Harder
- Zelensky’s Former Spokesperson: Ukraine Needs a Cease-Fire Now
Contact us at letters@time.com