China's first clone cows are going to become cow "mums" by mid April. Wang Yinxiang, chairperson of directors of Shandong YinXiang Industrial Group, said the five clone cows born during January and February at Wulidun of Cao county Shandong province have all been pregnant and are expected to give births in early or mid April.

"If this experiment is successful it will further prove that clone cows have normal reproductive capacity." Said Professor Chen Dayuan at the Animal Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Before this world's first clone sheep "Dolly" has successfully given birth to a lamb.

In 2001 the Animal Research Institute of CAS conducted scientific research on "somatic cell cloning of livestock" at Wulidun of Cao county Shandong Province. At the beginning of 2004 fourteen somatic cell clone cows were born one after another and became the first independently cloned domestic cows in China. Five of them survived. Last year, experts at CAS again succeeded at cow cloning experiments in places such as Xinjiang and Beijing. As for now animal-cloning technology has approach maturity in China.

Last June technicians conducted artificial insemination on those of the first clone cows that grew normally and had reached matured condition of breeding. All five clone cows became pregnant.

Now the five pregnant clone cows are all in good conditions. (People's Daily)