Newswise — Jennifer Barfield is a reproductive physiologist at Colorado State University. In recent years, she has been working with bison, and is part of a team of scientists that in recent years produced a genetically pure Yellowstone bison.
Her team takes semen and embryos from brucellosis-positive bison, runs them through a "clean-up" step to remove any Brucella bacteria, and uses the semen for artificial insemination or embryos for transfer to surrogate, brucellosis-free mothers.
Barfield is working with USDA/APHIS, the city of Fort Collins and Larimer County officials to support a bison herd on Soapstone Prairie in northern Larimer County using offspring with Yellowstone genetics from her research. The ultimate plan, which is already in the works, is to have enough animals on Soapstone Prairie to begin moving them to new herds on conservation, federal, and Native American lands.
She also is program director of a unique one-year, non-thesis program in assisted reproductive technologies. Students in this program learn to make embryos, do an internship instead of a final exam, and many of them help with bison and cattle.
Barfield helps manage a Facebook page dedicated to the bison herd. In any given week, her posts on the bison reach thousands of people. The more popular videos posted on the page have reached more than 100,000 people.
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