Story by Barbara Bellinger
Photos by William Malzahn
Lizbeth stands patiently, waiting for the doctor to finish the procedure. The doctor carefully removes the group of embryos and gently places them in the prepared container sitting open near his elbow. He stows his instruments in the black doctor’s bag at his feet, pats Lizbeth on her ample behind and says, “Good job, Lizbeth. See you next time.”
Patting a client on the behind would be tantamount to begging for a lawsuit in a typical doctor’s office. However, Lizbeth is not a typical patient. She is a cow, more specifically, a donor heifer. Lizbeth has just undergone a modern genetic procedure known as “embryo flushing.”
The process of embryo flushing (or embryo retrieval, in veterinary jargon) has become commonplace in the world of cattle breeding. It not only allows an owner of a great cow or bull to breed genetically improved calves, but also to allow the cow to have multiple calves a season rather than only one or two bred through the natural process.
Doctors George and Karen Sprague did not set out to breed “super cows.” They did not even plan to own cows at all. Their intention was to find a nice place just outside of Eugene. They wanted about five acres where George could pursue his interest in the hereditary instincts of Border Collies for herding sheep.
The Spragues arrived at the University of Oregon (UO) in 1977. Their move from the East Coast was temporary; they intended to finish their post-doctoral studies and return to the urban lifestyle to which they were accustomed. As self-described “East Coast snobs,” they fell in love with the Pacific Northwest, UO and the way UO conducted scientific research and never left.
“The people were friendly. It was amazing how shopkeepers would trust you,” Karen says.
In the early 1990s, the Spragues began looking for land. They wanted to take advantage of the ability of owning land, land that had almost ceased to exist on the crowded East Coast. A short time into the search, they had found nothing in their price range. One day, Karen received a call from their agent regarding a property that had been on the market for some time.
Although the price was right, the 40-acre lot was much more than their intended five acres. However, the moment Karen set foot on the rain-soaked hill that overlooked a muddy field made almost invisible by the blanket of fog that curled over it, she fell in love. The Spragues purchased the land and their ranch, Bar 1, was born.
Lane County Land Management had designated the land for agriculture. This meant that before building a house, the Spragues had to build a barn and populate the tree-filled land with the required amount of livestock. They had always intended having sheep on the ranch and did not think the restriction would be a problem. Then they found out their intended two to three animals had multiplied into an agricultural zoning requirement of eighty sheep. This was more sheep than the Spragues had bargained for.
“I thought we could rent the sheep,” Karen says, when describing how little they knew about raising livestock. After a frank discussion with one of their sheep-raising neighbors who told them, “Don’t get sheep. You’ll kill them,” the decision was made to raise cows.
The county’s livestock restriction for cattle was 21. The Spragues already had seven Polled Herefords on the ranch, which had been left behind by the previous owner. Karen recalls that they made a deal with the county to count unborn calves as part of the required twenty-one. Therefore, they only needed fourteen cows “on the ground” if seven of them were pregnant.
However, George says that what really happened was that they timed the visit by the county for when the seven calves had just been born. That way, the county signed off on the herd of 21 and, after the purchase was approved and the Spragues had their land, they sold the seven calves and kept the 14 mother Herefords, a practice that they have maintained to this day.
After settling the short-term issues, they had to decide what to do with the cows long-term. Through trial and error and extensive counseling from their neighbors, the Stallings, the Spragues began entering their stock at fairs.
“It was scary and intimidating,” George says.
At that point, he was going to the fairs and auctions and showing the Herefords himself. According to Karen, it was a nightmare. They had jumped feet first into cattle ranching and realized they knew little to nothing about the business.
“Why are we raising purebreds if they are just going to go to the Eugene auction [to be slaughtered]?” Karen remembers asking herself. The answer remained intangible as George continued to strategically improve their herd through breeding their cows with good bulls.
Both of the Spragues are molecular biologists. George’s particular focus is in yeast genetics. This fascination with genetics made him a natural at pinpointing what genetic crosses would result in a higher quality Hereford. While Karen does all the mucking about and manual labor on the ranch, George sits in his office up at the house concocting genetic matches.
“[George] has a head for animal genetics,” Karen says, “He could remember pedigrees and speak the [bovine terminology] right away.”
One year, George bought a nice cow at auction and asked a fellow auction attendee and cattle breeder, “Who should I breed her to?” The response was that he should flush her.
Impregnating cows through artificial insemination (AI) enables ranchers to breed a good cow with a good bull between $15-$3,000 a straw without having to pay upwards of $8,000 to buy the bull. One straw of semen is enough to artificially inseminate one cow. However, most ranchers use more than one straw per insemination to ensure the best possible flush with as many viable embryos as possible. Another reason smaller ranches do not buy the bull is that they do not have enough space. Bulls need to be kept separate from the cows as they enter into heat. According to George, bulls have been known to bust down fences, cross several pastures and go through anything in their way to get to a cow in heat.
Most cows begin having calves at two years old and finish when they are eight or nine years old. Depending on whether the mother cow has twins or not, they generally have from between two to ten calves in their lifetime. Although when cattle breeders use the embryo retrieval process in conjunction with artificial insemination, they can obtain anywhere from six to 30 viable embryos per cow, while still allowing the cow to have a natural pregnancy.
This means that a top-quality cow can be bred (using AI) to an elite bull and, instead of only having one calf a year, they can have upwards of thirty “super-calves” a year. The embryos retrieved during the flushing process at Bar 1 are frozen and either implanted in non-donor cows in the Sprague herd or sent out to ranches that have a large number of “recip” or surrogate cows that carry the newly made embryo to term. But, the process of flushing a cow requires much more than the simple artificial insemination of the past.
“It involves more hands-on interaction with the cows. You have to synchronize the cows so that they all come into heat at the same time,” George says.
Cattle ranchers do this through a process called super-ovulation.
“Timing is important. [The donor cows] need to get all of their [hormone] shots at the same time,” George says.
The veterinarian provides the hormones and a set of detailed hormone injection instructions to the rancher that, when followed correctly, ensure the donor cows come into heat or estrus within one or two weeks.
Dr. Greg Garcia, the vet used by the Spragues and by many ranchers on the West Coast, has been studying and developing the embryo retrieval process since attending graduate school at Colorado State University in 1976. While there, he studied under Dr. Peter Elsden, one of the two scientists worldwide who pioneered the embryo retrieval process.
“Through timed injections of Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) into the ovaries, we can increase the amount of eggs released at ovulation [from one or two to 30 or more] and time the release of the multiple oocytes (ova),” Garcia says.
Shortly before the super fertile eggs release from the ovaries, the AI technician injects the bull semen. George and Karen Sprague work closely with their AI technician, Dave Myhrum. Myhrum specializes in bovine artificial insemination and heat synchronization. He also maintains the nitrogen tank housed in the Sprague’s barn. Myhrum makes regular runs through the area to check and refill the nitrogen tanks that house the semen and previously fertilized embryos.
In preparation for the insemination, George already has the super-charged semen on hand in the nitrogen tank. After the hormone shots have been injected, George puts the AI tech on notice. When the cows come into standing heat (a phase which lasts from between twelve to 18 hours), George gives Myhrum a call and the AI technician heads out to Bar 1.
 
 
 
 
 
A cow is only fertile (receptive to the semen) when the eggs have been released, which occurs during the ten to 14-hour window directly following standing heat. Needless to say, timing is everything.
“The technician knows the history [of the cows’ heat cycles] and knows about when the cows will be coming into heat. In the old days they didn’t know about freezing. [The technician] had to collect the semen from the bull and run to insert it in the cow,” George says.
When Myhrum arrives to Bar 1 to perform the AI procedure, he removes the super-concentrated semen from the nitrogen tank stored in a corner of the gray shingled barn, thaws the straw of semen in warm water for about sixty seconds, inserts his arm into the cow’s anus up the rectum and injects the semen into the uterus. Ranchers who have a good bull and a good cow might use more straws to ensure the calf is “super-sized” on both sides (the cow and the bull). The AI procedure takes less than five minutes.
The embryo retrieval (flush) comes seven days after insemination. When Dr. Garcia began his first internship in 1978, abdominal surgery was required to retrieve the embryo retrieval. Today, the process is nonsurgical and takes only 20 minutes. He uses a piece of rubber tubing, similar in size and shape of a human catheter, and a Millipore filter to capture the embryos as they are flushed. Garcia gently slides the tubing up the cow’s vagina, through the cervix and into the uterus. Then, he flushes saline fluid in and out for about twenty minutes, collects the embryos on the 50-cent filter and hops up into the camper on the back of his pickup truck to check them out.
Garcia’s mobile laboratory resides in the camper that sits on the back of his pickup truck. Peering through a microscope, he identifies the embryos as “good, bad or ugly” or, professionally, as grades one, two or three. Garcia and the Spragues want to see as many “good” or grade one embryos as possible. Grades two and three are either unfertilized ova or degenerate embryo, neither of which are usable and must be discarded.
“The industry averages six useable embryos per flush,” Garcia says. However, there is a high degree of variability in the numbers. The Spragues do substantially better than the average,” Garcia says.
Garcia recalls that he obtained thirty viable embryos on George’s first flush. “More than 95 percent of cows these days are impregnated using artificial insemination rather than through natural breeding methods for this very reason.”
Since that day in 2006, George has gained quite the reputation for his flushes. In the twenty or so flushes that George has engineered in his cattle, Dr. Garcia has consistently retrieved more than fifteen viable embryos per flush.
The Spragues prefer to flush their “special” girls once and then allow them to have a natural pregnancy. However, some ranchers “keep the cow open” after each flush in order to repeat the procedure, bring the cow back into heat and perform as many flushes a year as possible, thus turning the cow into a veritable slot machine of “super-calves” and, subsequently, money.
Flushing can be a profitable enterprise and, for the Spragues, it will be one soon. Right now they have a really good cow. Her name is Flirtatious (or “Flirt”) and she lives on a farm in Nevada. A common method of ownership by smaller ranches is to partner with another rancher on a genetically superior cow.
Bar 1 shares half of Flirt’s ownership with Brumley Farms in Orovada, Nevada. This approach divides the costs associated with raising and flushing Flirt between the two ranches while providing them both with equal opportunity to use Flirt’s flushes for revenue as well as to continue to genetically enhance the cattle at both ranches.
Flirt was named national champion just two weeks after George bought interest in her. A name matters in this business and Flirt has the good name and a few other star components to go along with it. She’s now had her first round of great “embryo” calves. She is a national champion and a reserve national champion and she’s popular on the Polled Hereford circuit. This year George sold a “Flirt Flush” for $22,000 and has received a bid of $25,000 for another flush.
George and Karen Sprague, now seasoned cattle ranchers, no longer question why they are breeding purebred Polled Hereford cattle.
“Ultimately what the whole industry is producing is beef. The commercial ranches produce calves to sell for slaughter and they need a second industry to provide seed stock to keep the herd,” George says, “We, and ranchers like us, provide the seed stock.”
Currently, the Spragues have seven cows on their own property, all of which are pregnant. They partner on another seven cows held on other peoples’ properties, like Flirt. The Spragues also own a dozen more cattle held on other ranches.
“If we make our animals better and do a really good job [of engineering elite genetic crosses], we’re going to get high quality meat. The sizes of the tenderloin, rib eye [and other cuts of meat] have genetic components and hereditable traits,” George says, “Evaluating and breeding along genetic lines is a very efficient method to improve not only the quality of the animal but the quality of its meat.”
The Spragues might not have set out to become nationally known Polled Hereford cattle breeding experts, but George’s knack for genetics and pedigrees coupled with his successes at embryo flushing and breeding have put Bar 1 on the map in the Pacific Northwest.
In the intimate community of cattle breeding, where deals are still made with a nod and a handshake, a reputation such as theirs won’t stay local for long.
 

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