SELAH -- People around the Professional Bull Riders circuit have called Doctor Proctor a lot of things. Some 1,700 pounds of muscular attitude and athleticism. Unsafe at any speed. As "rank" a bucking bull as there is. Unsafe at any speed. One of a kind. But he is no longer the latter. At least, not technically. On Tuesday afternoon, the already legendary bull, the PBR's runner-up Bull of the Year in 2006 in only his first full year on the tour, came nose-to-nose with six yearling bulls he'd never seen before on the Selah ranch of his majority owner and trainer, Rod Chumley. "Normally, with any new bull," Chumley said, "he throws a fit." Not this time. Doctor Proctor -- or just "Doc," a name to which he actually responds -- was looking at six living, breathing replicas of himself. Or, at least, what he looked like as a 1-year-old. They were his clones. Small plugs of tissue were taken from the bull and sent to ViaGen, a genetics lab in Austin, Texas. DNA from that cellular material was transferred into eggs from which the genetic material had been removed, and, following an incubation period, eventually transferred into cows which then carried them until birth. Now, after seven months at ViaGen and five months grazing in a pasture in Naches, they were meeting their genetic "father." Or, really, their older twin. "It's not like it's six of his calves standing there, it's six of him. That's the spooky part," Chumley said, looking into the pen at Doc and his six clones. That first meeting was as amiable as could be. Doc sniffed the young ones. They sniffed him. And that was that. Tuesday's introduction was a prelude to tonight's PBR Enterprise Tour event at the SunDome, which will be Doctor Proctor's final PBR performance; his owners plan to retire him to a life of grazing and baby-making. Doc's six young mirror images will also be introduced to the crowd in the SunDome arena.  The experiment begins The decision to clone Doctor Proctor was made jointly by Chumley and his three partners. They did it largely to augment the breeding potential of their prize Red Brangus bull, but also as a grand experiment. ViaGen had already done the same with two other renowned bucking bulls, Yellow Jacket and Panhandle Slim, over the past two years. But none of those clones have been bucked. "They're still too young to put a rider on them, obviously," said ViaGen's George Owen. "But the curiosity is going to kill some people. I had a particular owner come in and saw his (clone) calves and said, 'We're not going to buck them.' But after they had the calves for about a week, they said, 'It's killing us, we're going to have to see what they can do when they get old enough.'" When Doc's clones are old enough, they'll be tested in the bullriding arena. That has been Chumley's thought all along. But he's also had a few ethical misgivings. "In my opinion, God made man and God made woman, and that's the way it works," Chumley said. "I used to ride bulls myself, and I'm telling you, you've got to be a God-fearing man to do that, because you're darn sure praying there's going to be a light at the end of the tunnel if things go really bad. "But when Gary (Long, a co-owner from of Naches) approached me about the idea, the spooky part is, yeah, you're sort of messing with Mother Nature here. Are we crossing the line?"  Ethics, costs and benefits Cloning has had its ethical opponents since it was still in its theoretical stages, long before the first test-tube baby three decades ago and certainly since cloning of sheep and cows began a decade later. Those questions may never go away, but they've been superceded by more practical ones: How prevalent might cloning become? Can it be cost-effective? "This is not really common, but it's fairly old scientific technology in the sense that it can be done," said Charles Gaskins, who holds a doctorate and is a professor of animal sciences at Washington State University. "I think there are questions about whether it's economically feasible; I don't think there's any question about the process. "It's expensive." Indeed. ViaGen's price to clone a bull is $17,500 for what Owen calls "the first copy." Additional clones from the same DNA cost less, but are still $10,000 or more. As such, Owen said, "You're only doing this on the very elite, top animals in any species." Long, who has retired from the Yakima-based, family-owned agricultural chemical and fertilizer business he built, G.S. Long Inc., said his interest in cloning Doctor Proctor was the potential research benefit. "The technology is out there, and I want to see if it really is applicable to our industry," Long said. "I see the benefits to agriculture, to feeding the world, not just in the recreational sport. It has limited benefits there -- will the six buck? I don't know. But it's been fascinating to be around them on a daily basis. "People wonder, will they be deadheads, they'll just be like zombies? Wrong. They're living, breathing creatures, just like any calf." Around Long -- on whose Naches fields the six clones have spent the past five months -- they're like puppies, nuzzling his hand to be petted. In that sense, they have the same amiable personality as Doctor Proctor. A beast in the bucking arena -- he bucked off 30 straight professional bullriders before one finally stayed on for the requisite eight seconds -- Doc doesn't try to hook, stomp or hurt any of the cowboys who climb up on his back. "He's not mean," Chumley said. "He's gonna buck you off, gonna look at the crowd, then he's gonna head right out of the arena back into the pen and have some hay. "Just another day at the office." Except that now, when he goes back to the pen, he'll be looking at six mirror images of his own youth.  * Scott Sandsberry can be reached at 577-7689 or ssandsberry@yakimaherald.com.   SELAH -- People around the Professional Bull Riders circuit have called Doctor Proctor a lot of things. Some 1,700 pounds of muscular attitude and athleticism. Unsafe at any speed. As "rank" a bucking bull as there is. Unsafe at any speed. One of a kind. City Desk, LOCAL

2008-04-09T22:45:46Z

Scott Sandsberry

2008-04-12T06:48:21Z

false

2008-04-13T00:03:31Z

Bucking Mother Nature 3121 bucking-mother-nature Web Story

Yakima Herald-Republic

2008-04-12T07:00:00Z

6131098

041208 Cloned bucking bull published Web Daily

2009-03-20T02:25:49Z