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Many sheep may require supplementation with cobalt or selenium, whilst many also require copper for the prevention of swayback. Often more than one are in short supply and blanket supplementation is often the answer, but this could result in problems of toxicity especially with copper in sheep. This trial was carried out on a flock known to be copper sufficient to investigate the supplementation of extra copper in the form of a sintered soluble glass bolus being used to supply selenium and cobalt to the flock.Two batches of Lleyn sheep were selected, the first were forty ewe lambs, whilst the second set were thirty gimmers. The ewe lambs were randomly split into two groups one being given a copper, cobalt and selenium bolus (Cosecure®, Telsol Ltd) with the other group remaining untreated as controls.

Serum, which is routinely included in many embryo culture media, can decrease the viability of bovine and ovine embryos produced in cultures employing synthetic oviduct fluid (SOF; Kuran et al., 1999) and represents a possible route for transmission of disease. Alternative approaches include the use of chemically defined culture media but results from studies which avoid sera and its derivatives (e.g., albumin) are generally less favourable due to a lack of knowledge regarding the embryo's response to specific nutrients, most notably fatty acids. As a preliminary step towards investigating fatty acid influences on bovine embryo developmentin vitro, the present study examined the effect of adding palmitic acid (C16:0) to SOF plus bovine serum albumin (BSA) on the performance of this semi-defined culture medium and contrasted it with embryo production in SOF supplemented with serum.