BHU Veterinary Lab: Gangatiri Surrogate Delivers 24 kg Sahiwal Heifer

A Gangatiri cow used as a surrogate delivered a Sahiwal heifer weighing 24 kilograms on Friday at Banaras Hindu University’s Rajiv Gandhi South Campus. The Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences put the birth on the day’s campus record around 15:26 IST on 21 August 2026.

The work sat under a National Agriculture Development Plan project. Embryo transfer and sex-sorted semen were used. Faculty briefers cited a genetic potential of 14–16 litres of milk a day from the high-merit Sahiwal source. That number is the source animal’s cited potential. It is not a yield measured from this newborn heifer.

The project timeline starts on 11 November 2025. A high-yielding Sahiwal cow went through superovulation, was artificially inseminated with sex-sorted semen, and six embryos were moved into synchronised recipient animals. Friday’s calf is reported as one outcome of that sequence, with a Gangatiri serving as the gestational carrier.

Dr Manish Kumar led the scientific team. Co-principal investigators named in the coverage were Dr Kaustubh Kishore Saraf and Dr Ajit Singh. Finance Officer Dr Manoj Kumar Pandey and Institute of Agricultural Sciences director Prof. V.K. Mishra inspected the work after the birth. Dean Dr Amit Raj Gupta and South Campus in-charge Prof. B.M.N. Kumar also spoke in the campus briefing summarised for the day.

Sex-sorted semen raises the chance of heifer calves from selected genetics. Embryo transfer lets another cow carry the pregnancy. Here the genetics were Sahiwal; the surrogate was Gangatiri. Campus briefers did not call the birth India’s first success of its kind.

The live birth was dated to 21 August and the calf’s weight fixed at 24 kilograms under the NADP project frame.

Campus livestock notes often travel with optimistic milk figures attached to calves still on colostrum. The 14–16 litre line belongs in the potential column. Confirmed for 21 August: live birth, 24 kg weight, Sahiwal heifer, Gangatiri surrogate, NADP project framing, and the November 2025 superovulation and six-embryo transfer sequence.

One weighed calf does not reset dairy averages across eastern Uttar Pradesh. It does put a dated, breed-named result on the public board for the veterinary faculty’s NADP-linked team at the south campus. The inspection by Pandey and Mishra shows institutional attention after the delivery. Friday’s coverage remains a campus birth note, not a peer-reviewed paper. No dispatch reproduced a state livestock-board certificate for this animal.

Faculty officials Pandey and Mishra inspected the 24 kg Sahiwal heifer after Friday’s delivery at the south-campus veterinary unit.