Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. I'm very fortunate today to have Tullis Matson on the line. Tullis is the founder of Nature Safe, which is a really interesting charity that we're gonna talk about over the next, 20 minutes, half an hour, but.
We obviously share a few things in common to this, as we've been chatting, there is an interest in AI and frozen semen, isn't there? There's a common bond. There, there is, there is, yeah, we, we've been sort of doing artificial insemination with horses for, I feel like an eternity now, but, sort of 30 odd years now, which is, which is great, and it's great to see the journey that's, it's changed over those 30 years to see where it is now, and the uptake of it in, in, in the UK as well has been quite brilliant, yeah.
Well, I remember when I was a student, I went around with a, a vet, a great vet called John Newcombe. Prior to going to vet school and then at vet school, and then at the end, one of my favourite horses, Coleman, was at the vet school as well, and I ended up looking after him, and I think Coleman's got a, a reputation in the the field. There was plenty of semen stored and presumably lots of foals out there that are Coleman's offspring.
Yes, I think, I think there would be, yes, yeah, I mean, that's the beauty about, AI and frozen semen, and that's what we'll come on to later, you know, you can use it, you know, in 1020, 30, or even 1000 years' time, you know, that's the beauty about it. When saving those genetics, it's, it's a great way, as a business side or, or as a conservation side, you know. And of course the, the cattle industry led the way, it was very, very entrenched and and very much accepted in in the cattle industry.
Obviously there was this conservative attitude in in the horse industry and particularly and I mean thoroughbred still er can't be artificially inseminated, can they, or at least they can't then go on to race and things. No, so the thoroughbred industry, everything's gotta be done by. Natural covering for many reasons and for good reasons as well, you know, obviously, the gene pool would suddenly, you know, would shrink if they suddenly could cover, they can cover about 250 mares and they could suddenly maybe do 1000.
So, so the sporthouse industry was, I'd say maybe the shadow of the Thoroughbrid industry for for a while with its the techniques, and then. You know, we started doing it, it must be 32, 33 years ago now, you know, through, really through by an accident, you know, we were naturally covering and then unfortunately, the stallion ruptured the mare, and the mayor passed away. And, and that was an Irish draught stallion as well, stan called Sportsman.
And by skipping. And I thought there must be an easy way of doing this. And, and literally from that, it's amazing how your pals take you in, in business or whichever way it is.
I thought there must be an easy way, and I used to hatch chickens, so I loved thatching chickens out and had all these incubators, and I cleaned all my incubators out, put all my AI stuff in them. It may not be very hygienic, but I did, . And, thought, right, this is the, you know, find another way.
And I learned it in New Zealand, because in New Zealand, I went up to New Zealand after this accident, and, and with the North and South Island, and they shipped sea went backwards and forwards because it's so expensive to move horses backwards and forwards, on the, on the, on the, standard bred, stud farms and then started saying, bring it back here. And I think at the. I sort of learned a bit.
I think I was putting everything in the mayor sometimes apart from seeing. I, yeah, I really was just trying to feel my way. And then it just snowballed.
It really then started to take off. I remember the first year we AI 6 mayors, and it literally doubled nearly every year, I think the following year, I had the stats it was something like 12 or 13 mayors, and it was 25 and and it just grew and we were very lucky we were in the right place at the right time. And it grew and grew and grew, and then we suddenly realised, actually this is a great way now, not just on that side of it, it's, of a sort of health and safety side, it was a great way of then starting to spread the genetics around, and, and it was really the invent of Genus.
I don't know whether, you know Genus, the cattle company, they. Said look, we're really interested in, in, in this, of of maybe looking at the equine industry because they're very much, huge in the, in the bovine industry, so they, to be fair, back in '96, that's when I really went on my own and started. Freezing horse even, well they did the freezing over there, to be fair.
We did the collecting over here and it, it, it got bigger and bigger, really on that side and then foot and mouth came in I think about the 2000 or something, and they said right, that's it, we can't. Have the semen come to our labs, so we thought crike what, so we're gonna have to start freezing ourselves, and suddenly realised actually the freezing got better and better, so you're doing it on site. So it was a, it was, and that was a really great start.
And those were the days actually. Jonathan Pycott was very much involved in those days, so that's when we started setting up the beaver AI technician courses then for the veterinarians. I remember doing the very, very first ones with, Jay Nixon was, was involved in them, and yeah, the right teaching vets, you know, all on that side of it.
It was a huge, huge honour to be a part of those very, very early days back in '96. Mm. And I remember coming over to your, stud farm in, in Whitchurch with, with Jonathan, and it was a, a great day.
Obviously, also for doing all the PD and diagnosis of pregnancies, which they're, which Jonathan's able to teach to the students. So it's a, it's a great setup you've got there. And, and of course, this has helped in the journey to what perhaps we're gonna talk a little bit more about today, which is, which is nature's safe.
Some of the technology and the techniques that you've learned. For horses you've been able to then start to think well. We obviously have a problem of biodiversity.
We talk a lot about carbon, but actually biodiversity, there are species being lost every day. Tell us a little bit about the premise behind nature's safe. Yeah, well, the sort of going back a step like you're saying it, I was, my father was actually president of the Rare Breed Survival Trust, er which was er er set up by Adam Henson's er er father back in '76, I think, but they've never lost a species ever since.
It was set up, Joe Henson, that's it, who set it up. And, and I became a trustee of that after my father passed away, and it had a huge honour. And I must admit I love technologies.
I love the new technologies that are out there, like your AI like your freezing semen. But I love my rare breeds. I just love seeing if there's a way that you could try and use science and technology to help them.
So of course we were banking semen from Suffolk punches, Clydesdale and Cleveland bays, you know, there's, there's, I think there's 14 rare breed or native, breeds of equines in the UK. 12 are, are endangered. So we use these technologies and suddenly realised actually God these can actually help.
So we had the first foal born by sex semen, that was through using the, the, the sexing machines at Cogent. There's only 80. Females breeding females left in the country, there's about 300 breeding females in the world.
Remember these amazing animals that suffered punches, they once put food on our table in the 1940s. You know, we, I feel we've got a sort of debt of gratitude to really keep them going. Some people sort of say, well, we haven't got use for them now, but to me they're just an iconic breed of horses and I feel we've got a sense of duty and it's so sad to see.
I've got a picture of my grandfather actually getting the the hay in on this farm with some self punches and, and so, well, let's see if we can save them. My dad was a carter at the Liverpool docks, so he knew the horses very well and I actually worked as a student at Croxford Park, which is a rare breed survival trust centre, . What, rode a Cleveland Bay out there back, because I'm probably the only one who could get onto it.
And of course we did a lot of work in in Croxford Park with the Irish miyal cow, which was a very rare breed of cow, and Ian Gill was one of our doctors of, genetics, taught us all of our genetics at Liverpool University. So I know the Rare Breed Survival Trust very well, and it, it's great to see it's still going strong as well. Yeah, it is, it's like you say I was a huge honour to be part of that, and then it sort of the light bulb moment came I thought, well if we can say that, you know, stuff a punch or a rhino by using these new technologies, why can't we?
Save, you know, save the rhinos or the elephants or and sort of looked into it a bit more. And we set up another company, a genetics company for the preserving the tissue samples for cats, dogs and horses. And again, if we can bring a cat and dog or or a horse back from a tiss literally a tissue sample, again, why can't we do this for other species?
I thought, well, obviously it's already out there. And then I spoke to a few other companies that have got buy banks out there, and there's 11 particularly one in the UK and called the called the Frozen Ark, and they said yes, but what you, what we're looking at is just freezing them out down at minus 80. And what you're proposing to do, and we're looking at just at the DNA, but we can't bring these cells back to life.
And so they said, yeah, what you're doing is the missing link, which was, which was great, really. So, we thought, right, let's see if we can establish something to buy a bank to freeze these cells in a living state. So that's where Nature's safe was formed, I mean.
It's a really sad predicament we're all in, we hear it on the news every single day about the environmental loss and the the loss of habitat, with loss of habitat we get lots of species, with loss of species, we lose our biodiversity. To put it into context, I think I was saying before, by the time we've finished this interview, there'll be another two species going extinct, you know, one every 15 minutes roughly. There's 66 million species roughly on the planet, there's 1 million, you know, you know, endangered, there's 40,000 critically endangered and it's, it's, you know, it's really, really sad, so we've all got our.
Sort of sense of duty I feel to do something, and I think we all do different things in different ways. And it's the biggest honour in the world to be a part of this, and it's a great team. It's not just I'm, yes, I'm the founder, but we have a huge team behind there just say for scientists and zoo people and so it's a great team effort to come together and we've got Chester Zoo's one of our foundation zoos, they'd be absolutely brilliant and, and, and really getting behind us at the beginning, .
And saying we really want to support this, and we've got ZSL or London Zoo on board now, we've got Ty Cross, we've got lots of different zoos on board and now we've got 12 different zoos. So it's, hopefully it can really make a difference. We've frozen 144 different species just in the last year, everything from the southern white rhino to Asian elephants to something called the mountain chicken frog, which I bet no one's really ever heard of, but they are as important, if more important than than some of the bigger species because they are.
You know, they're they're gonna help if we can save them, slow down the biodiversity loss. Do you know the world's longest running online veterinary conference is back? Join us from the 6th to the 10th of February 2023 for the webinar vet's 11th annual virtual congress.
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I think you made a really good point. I think they're all equally important. We have the sexy rhino species and then you have the mountain chicken frog, which obviously nobody's heard of, but yeah.
You know, as a, as a believer, they're all God creatures and you know, we should try and be saving them shouldn't we? And it of course, what you're saying is with the tissue, you're, you're saving tissue which then can be eventually somewhere down the line, differentiated back into semen into eggs and then you can recreate. The species is a donor er species.
I, I suppose frogs are easier because that's all external fertilisation, so you can clone a, a frog a lot easier than a, than a mammal presumably. Yes, in, in, in, in theory, and it's and there's all different aspects and how it works basically when an animal dies at say Chester Zoo or wherever, if it's a female, they take a skin sample off, be it to ear, and they take the ovaries out and they send us those, and then the ovaries, especially with, you know, you have all the eggs in there, so we slice that up and freeze the. The, the, the, the, the, the ovaries down and the skin sample.
Now the ovaries in theory, in the future, they've already done this in mice, have they done it in a rhino? No, they haven't, but in the mice they have, where they can start growing those, eggs, you know, in a laboratory, then hopefully by ICSI and other methods, they can fertilise those eggs. With the skin sample, it's a really interesting one, because you've got the whole DNA of that whole animal in there, whereas at the spur of an egg, you only have part of the DNA.
So you can. Literally turn that cell, it's a living cell, it's programmed to use skin, that's why we like the skin cells because they replicate, you know, like when you cut yourself, it, it regenerates and scabs over the cell does the same thing, but if you can reprogram that cell, you turn it into what's called a pure lon stem cell. And then by adding different growth factors or or gene editing it, you can make it think it's a sperm or an egg.
Now that's only one and obviously there's the cloning side, there's all different attributes to it, and a lot of it we don't really know. So a lot of it is for the future. So, but, yeah, there's a, it's a huge task, and we need 50 different genetic samples, ideally from each species, because you need diversity.
One thing people don't realise is what makes the species go extinct, yes, we're talking about loss of habitat, but it's the inbreeding, it's the inbreeding, we see that with the stuff of punches, we see that with the Clydesdale sometimes with the inbreeding, it's what makes them go extinct. We see some of these rare breed horses coming with tiny little testicles when they should be bigger, and that's sort of nature's way of saying we can't carry, and that's the same with these other species as well. So when we lock down that.
Genetic diversity in the future in 1020, 30 or 1000 years' time, we can bring back that lie that's lost and there's a, A great example, I, I, I don't know if you've heard of the black footed ferrets. They're, they're, it's a, they're indigenous to America. They virtually went extinct in the 1970s, got wiped out by distem distemper.
They, they've only, I think, come from four different lines, but they had the foresight to freeze some cells down there, and David Naborough spoke about it about 6 months ago in the mating game, and so, so they're so inbred. So they got a line that was lost 30 years ago. Woke those cells up, cloned the ferret, she was born, she was called Elizabeth Ann, and she was born in 2020 in, in, I think it was, it was in July 2020.
And she could be the stabilising that species now, and it's just incredible that, you know, effectively that ferret is 30 years old and it's born. So it really shows really what can be done by living by bats, it really does. It gives us a little bit of hope.
. No, it's a great, it's a great story and I think. You know, you were saying that you obviously freeze the ovaries and you freeze the skin. But presumably semen also can freeze for a long time.
What, at what stage do you think it loses its viability once it's frozen? Well, we, we started freezing in '96 and back then we've got totally different freezing technology that we have now, so the cryoprotectants we use and things like that have changed. And we're still using stuff back in '96.
So it doesn't really deteriorate and I think what we're freezing now, I think will last 1020, 1 1000 years. Time, it just, there seems to be no deterioration at all. When it's suspended in animation at -196, it, it doesn't really change.
It's, I can't say never, but we just don't see any. And then, and our cryopro protective we used now are so much better back then. So, you know, we're freezing, we've froze some semen off a, a, a mouse deer not so long ago, which was one of the smallest deer in the world.
Incredibly rare. So when we're freezing semen obviously these species, those we can use a little bit sooner because. In theory we can use that, the, the, the semen now.
And the testicles, we do the same with that. We take a biopsy of, testicles of tissue. And they have done this in mice already, but again, we haven't done it in other species, where they can grow semen in their labs from those, cause that's, that, that's because they are designed to do that.
So we're, we're doing different parts of the, the reproductive anatomy and as well as skin, but skin is the easiest one, and. 80% of our samples we freeze down is skin because it's so easy, and it has 5 days. So where the sperm and ovaries and ovaries and testicles, we've, we have to be freezing down in 24 hours with skin samples we've got up to 5 days, which is brilliant, so we can get stuff from all over.
Yeah, it's really fascinating. It's you know, you were saying about why you started this, the unfortunate accident for the, for the mayor, obviously very sad, but of course there's dangers. To the person trying to collect the semen as well, so, you know, I, I've, I've obviously been involved with collecting semen in, in cows and horses and, and you need to be able to move quite agilely, don't you?
It's not, it's not one for the faint hearted, is it? No, they collected off, we do about 120 stallions here roughly a year, and there's all different shapes and sizes, and they're generally OK, and you can get them on the dummy, but some have got higher libidos than others, and you're right, and I always. Feel, yeah, sometimes, you know, you do these courses and things like that that we've done for years and say, this is what you've gotta do.
But when you've got thrust yourself underneath a, a stallion, I remember collecting off an Irish draught stadion once, and I was at one end of the, the field next to the mayor, waiting for the Irish draught stadion coming. They came at the top end and said, well, it felt like it was doing about 30 mile an hour by. Tunny, I know that I tra I've maybe got hit that there thinking, crikey, now I've got to get underneath it.
This tonne of thoughts or through. But, but yeah, it's, but we've learned an awful lot of how we, you know, the best environments to do this in now, and, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, to be fair, yeah, it's, it's pretty, pretty safe, but yes, you just have to be aware of this 100%. Steel, steel toe caps and hard hats are always useful, aren't they?
A must, very much so, yes. I, I, I still remember, and I won't mention any names, but in my group as a student and now quite an eminent, veterinarian. And he was just a bit too slow, sort of getting the artificial vagina out from the, from the cow, and we all, we all laughed, but of course it, he was OK, but he got trodden on a little bit, which made it quite amusing.
It was a terrible thing to be amused about, but we'd all managed to move a bit quicker. Yeah, no, no, definitely, and, and, yeah, some of these bigger horses like we do big shires, you know, and, and they're over a tonne, but they're basically we've been getting trained onto a dummy mare, it just makes the whole, whole job easier. I mean, obviously I went, I had the fortunate thing going to South Africa.
We kept off elephants, but we, we sedate them and knock them out. Thank goodness you you wouldn't want to be. Yes, that would be a challenge to us, so I'd like to see the video of that.
It would, it would be showed at your funeral, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How did tell us, yeah, what happened to Tulles, well, this is this is that one, yeah, try to wrestle. He lived the, he died the way he he he had lived.
Yeah. So, but yeah, it's, yeah, doing all these different species and what I find fascinating, you get. You, you, you get the call from the zoo saying, look, this animal's passed away, and I say we've got a great team behind us, so we're always trying to work out how to freeze it, but sometimes these species come in, they've never ever been frozen before the the the sea.
So, and you've got this critically endangery, and it's quite, well it's very stressful, you know, in the fact that, and there's, I have to adit a lot of the time it doesn't work cos you've got to find out what mediums, what extenders, and all the different things to try and feed that species down. So, and it's coming to you and you have a very short time. Period to do it, so it is, it's absolutely fascinating.
I find it's one of the best jobs in the world to do because you're always trying to think on your feet. You're learning all the time, aren't you? Learning all the time and and all the, all the time when you're doing it and .
We grow cells. The other day we had a the other day, Lucy and our other lab, we had a, I think it was a cheetah that died, back in 2019. We just froze the ear sample down.
We woke those cells up about a year ago. And it's fascinating how that was suspended in animation. We wrote this, and you can see life forming again in front of you under that microscope, the DNA, you know, or not the DNA you can see those skin cells where the DNA is stored.
In there, and it's just quite incredible now what science has to offer, for sort of conservation and how it could be used in the future. It really is, and it's just amazing, the whole of nature and biology, how it actually works. And I think there's so much more else to learn about all these different species and what we can do with these cells.
I think we're only just, starting off, to be fair. It's absolutely fascinating, it really is. To this, I know, obviously you've got some partners helping you with this, that partners Bover back, perhaps at the end of this, you know, in the description, we'll, we'll put your email address so people can get in contact if they want to know more, or how they can get involved.
But it's fascinating work. I think it's one of our value words is innovation. I love to talk to innovative companies, which I think it's fair to say you're one of those.
Yeah, well, I'd love, we're very much about having anybody on board. It doesn't have to be money either. I know people say, oh yeah, but yes, obviously we need money to sustain the charity, but it's about door openings.
We're doing, you know, an event at the Natural History Museum, you know, in February, and, you know, Verbach are our main sponsors there, and we've got vet partners and, you know, it's a lot that and, and, and Bova, but the veterinary industry, I have to admit, have really got behind this and I can't thank. You guys, enough out there, but we're any, anyway, we're yeah it's only, it's 100 pounds to freeze one sample. It's 5000 to preserve one species.
It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, yes, it's a lot, but it's not a lot really, depending, you know, showing what it can actually do. So, you know, we're very much about getting people on board, and, it's a great journey to be on and and I, I, I think it, you know, we're only at the race start of it, which is fascinating. To us, it's been really fascinating to speak to you.
Thank you so much for giving your time and you better go back and start collecting some samples, I think. Yeah. Well, thank you, Antony, it's been an absolute pleasure and thank you so much for having me on there and anything to sort of spread the word is is a great bonus, so I really appreciate that.
Thank you. Thanks Tulas. Thanks everyone for listening.
This is Anthony Chadwick, the webinar vet. This has been another episode of Vet Chat. Bye bye.
