Written by Lonny (April 1, 2010)
Dr. Haven Hendricks and I made some jerky with different spices to test with the Ethiopian people. I did a trial with our office staff, and found that they liked most of the different types. I found out that they do have jerky here called “quanta” so it will not be hard to find a good market for our jerky products.
I spent a some time with Dr. Debay and Georgia who are in the process of building their own dairy farm north of Addis. They have done extensive market analyses. There is a growing demand for quality dairy products here and it is anticipated to increase as the economic situation in Ethiopia continues to improve.
We continue to have success with our embryo transfer part of the project. We have two more confirmed pregnancies from frozen embryos at Debre Zeyit Animal Research Center (DZARC). We had three, but one aborted at about 40 days, which is not uncommon. There are also two pregnancies from the fresh embryos that we collected from the DZARC cows on my last trip. We recovered nine embryos from two donor cows yesterday, transferred the viable ones, and implanted two more frozen embryos. I am excited by the fact that all of the preparation and most of the work yesterday was done by the Ethiopian researchers. This is the sixth successful embryo recovery exercise accomplished at three different locations.