Canada’s first cloned bull goes public

MONTREAL – At first glance, Starbucks II looks a lot like most of his bovine brethren: broad shoulders, stocky build, massive haunches.

But on examining his pedigree, Starbucks II is no ordinary livestock: He’s Canada’s first cloned bull, born and raised in one of the country’s premiere artificial insemination centres.

The almost 10-year old is on display at the St. Hyacinthe Agricultural Expo, a fair for the farming business along with 2,000 other animals, food products, plowing and threshing equipment, tractor pulls and rides for the kids at this annual festival of all things grown and raised for our alimentary pleasure.

Starbucks II is big, weighing in at 1,100 kilograms and standing 6 feet tall at his shoulder. For safety’s sake, his horns have been cut and he has a Ferdinand ring in his nose so his handlers to control him.

For the first time, the test tube beast is outside the biosecure facilities at the Centre d’insemination artificielle du Quebec, and the primo attention grabber in the cow, bull, sheep and goat collection in the Expo fairgrounds 45 kilometres southeast of Montreal.

Starbucks the younger was bred from a champion stud who, in is his heyday, supplied $25 million worth of bull semen to breeders in 45 ountries, said Yves Brindle, a biologist with the CIAQ.

Starbucks the elder, whose full title was Hanoverhill Starbucks, was brought to St. Hyacinthe in 1979 for breeding purposes. After his lengthy career, he died at age 19 in 1988, and some of his semen, removed a month before his death, was frozen.

Three scientific groups (CIAQ, Alliance Boviteq and the veterinary department of the Universite de Montreal) took part in the groundbreaking cloning whereby cells from Starbucks were combined with host ova, the female cells were removed and the in-vitro embryo placed inside receiver cows.

Two years after the death of the first, the second Starbucks came into the world via caesarean section.

Starbucks II may be the clone of a prize winning and very profitable stud, but neither his semen nor his flesh can be sold in Canada due to Environment and Health Canada regulations.

"This (cloning) was not done for the money, we were interested in new reproductive techniques," Brindle said.

Nor has Starbucks the younger ever had the pleasure of mating with a live cow, merely doing what he does into a rubber cylinder with a plastic lining, as his sperm is only destined for research purposes.

"C’est pas correct," said Odette Jerome of Mirabel, the daughter of a farmer, when told of the bull’s sad love life.

Brindle said at one time there were 13 different cloned bulls in Canada but only two are left.

Because of the time it takes to clone and the restrictions on the sale of the byproducts of the process, cloning is no longer a priority for CIAQ.

Starbucks II will be on display until Sunday at Expo de St. Hyacinthe. For more information, go to the website www.expo-agricole.com.