Oxygen consumption has been regarded as a useful indicator for assessment of mammalian embryo quality. However, there was no standard criterion to measure the oxygen consumption of embryos. Here, we measured oxygen consumption of bovine embryos at various developmental stages was measured using a scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM). We found that the oxygen consumption significantly increased in blastocyst-stage embryos compared to other stage embryos (from 2-cell-stage to morula-stage), indicating that oxygen consumption reflects the cell number ($5.2{sim}7.6{ imes}10^{14}/mol;s^{-1}$ versus $1.2{sim}2.4{ imes}10^{14}/mol;s^{-1}$, p<0.05). In the morula-stage embryos, the oxygen consumption of in vivo derived embryos was significantly higher than that of in vitro produced embryos ($4.0{ imes}10^{14}/mol;s^{-1}$ versus $2.4{ imes}10^{14}/mol;s^{-1}$, p<0.05). However, there was no significant difference in consumption of oxygen by in vivo and in vitro-derived bovine blastocyst-stage embryos (p>0.05). In the frozen-thawed blastocyst-stage embryos, live embryos showed significantly higher oxygen consumption than dead embryos ($4.7{ imes}10^{14}/mol;s^{-1}$ versus $1.0{ imes}10^{14}/mol;s^{-1}$, p<0.05). These results indicate that the measuring oxygen consumption by SECM can be used to evaluate bovine embryo quality.