An experiment was conducted to determine whether balancing dietary crude protein for optimal rumen degradability would improve fertilization rate and quality of ova in lactating dairy cows. Thirty-eight Holstein cows in early lactation were fed 1 of 2 diets formulated to be isocaloric and isonitrogenous, containing 16% crude protein. Diet 1 contained 73% rumen degradable intake protein, whereas diet 2 contained 64% rumen degradable intake protein. The cows were induced to superovulate and were inseminated, and ova were recovered nonsurgically on postbreeding day 7. Ova were counted and classified as fertilized or unfertilized. Fertilized ova were scored as excellent, good, fair, poor, or degenerate. Unfertilized ova and poor and degenerate embryos were considered to be nontransferable ova and excellent, good, and fair embryos were considered to be transferable ova. There were no differences for mean number of fertilized, unfertilized, transferable, or nontransferable ova recovered from cows fed the 2 diets (P greater than 0.10). Mean percentage of fertilized ova recovered from cows was greater (P less than 0.05) in those fed diet 2, compared with diet 1. Mean percentage of transferable ova recovered from cows tended to be greater (P = 0.06) in those fed diet 2, compared with diet 1. More cows failed to yield transferable ova (P less than 0.05) when fed diet 1, compared with diet 2. Fertilization failure or early degeneration of embryos may occur in cows fed excess rumen degradable protein.