Funding Request to Save the White Park Breed in Europe

My name is Eric Bautsch and I appreciate you taking the time to read my request.

I am a White Park Cattle breeder in France, in fact I am the only one. I also work closely with the White Park Cattle Societies in both the UK where the breed originates and in Germany, where there are about 10 small herds. Apart from France and Germany there are no other herds in the rest of Europe.

Between Germany and France, we have already exchanged bulls to ensure genetic diversity, but in about 3 years time, the herds in Germany and France require a new bull as the existing bulls would come up against their own offspring.

Unfortunately with bluetonge disease (BTV-3) currently spreading in the UK, the UK now can no longer export live cattle to the rest of Europe for breeding purposes. As there is no vaccination available at this point in time against BTV-3, this situation is not likely to change any time soon and it will take years before the UK can export again. This will in all likelihood be several years to late for the herds in France and Germany and they will wither and the herds die out.

The herds in France and Germany however are vitally important to the continued existence of the White Park Cattle breed, should (god forbid) some fatal disease break out in the UK (e.g. foot and mouth, and the farmers among us will all remember what that was like).

We have therefore considered what we can do to ensure new bloodlines arrive in continental Europe. There are only two options available: either artificial insemination or embryo transfer. Unfortunately, the easier and cheaper method of these – artificial insemination – does not give us the genetic diversity that we need as 50% of the DNA is still inherited from the mother of course.

Embryo Transfer however is quite expensive and this is why we are launching this appeal.

When I say we, the plan is to implant embryos in a herd in France, a farmer willing to cooperate at no profit has already been found, allow the calves to be raised by their surrogate mothers and then transport half the calves to the farms in Germany.

We are looking to implant a total of 20 embryos in 4 batches.

Previous experience of implantation has yielded a 50% success rate, that means we get about 10 calves. Of these only about 50% will be bulls as no sexed semen is available for the insemination of the embryos. That means we get about 5 bulls. As bulls make up 50% of the genetic of any herd, we need outstanding bulls for reproduction. So we can expect about 2 outstanding bulls, i.e. one for Germany and one for France.

We would of course keep the remaining animals, too. Any females born could of course go to the existing bulls.

We already have the embryos and the semen available in the UK and we have a technician for implantation.

Our costs are thus:

£20,000 20 embryos flushed, inseminated and transported from the UK to France (£1,000 per embryo)

€1,000 implantation (€50 per embryo)

€2,500 recompense for lost calves to the farmer (€250 per calf born, the same price dairy calves would sell for after birth)

€2,000 to allow 10 calves to be raised by their surrogate mothers until weaning. (€200 per calf as per Chambre d’Agriculture price charts)

€3,900 Transport to the White Park farm in France (650km one way, four trips)

€4,000 Transport after raising from White Park Farm in France to Germany (1,400 km one way, one trip only)

(for the purposes of this table, €1 is about 85p Sterling)

Which makes a total of approximately £32,000

If you are able to help at all, this would be fantastic. Your help will ensure the continued existence of this iconic British breed.

Please distribute this appeal as much as possible.

Thank you so much.

Eric Bautsch and the team of volunteers from the UK, France and Germany….

Here is the link to our appeal on go-fund-me.