Semen and haematological responses of rabbit bucks administered oral folic acid

Abstract

Some researchers have inferred that folic acid is necessary for reproduction and could enhance blood formation. Thus, a Completely Randomized Design Experiment (CRD) was conducted to evaluate the impact of oral administration of folic acid on the semen and haematological characteristics of New Zealand White rabbit bucks. The treatments designated treatment 1 (T1), treatment 2 (T2) and treatment 3 (T3) having 12 rabbits each were replicated 3 times with 4 rabbits per replicate. The ages of the 36 pre-pubertal rabbit bucks were between 2 to 3 months, and weighed approximately 2.56 kg. Three experimental diets were formulated to meet the nutrient requirements of rabbit bucks. Each rabbit buck on T1 were orally administered folic acid at 0.0 mg, T2 2.5mg folic acid and T3 5.0 mg folic, respectively. Data were collected for semen characteristics and haematology from the rabbit bucks. Data collected on different parameters were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results showed that significant increases (p<0.05) were observed on libido, semen pH, spermatozoa progressive motility (67.40-80.20%), spermatozoa live proportion (83.01-94.12%), sperm concentration (112.24-133.80 x106/ml), total number of sperm per ejaculate (50.65-67.66 x106/ml), total viable sperm (291.58-496.69 x109/ml), normal sperm proportion (85.16-91.64%). Also, significant reductions (p<0.05) were observed on the percentage head abnormality of the spermatozoa (3.74-3.18), total abnormality (2.13-0.93), mid-piece abnormality (2.35-0.79), cytoplasmic abnormality (7.17-2.89), and total abnormality (14.84-8.35); while the haematological parameters such as haemoglobin (13.53-14.20g/dl), packed cell volume (33.00-34.96%), white blood cell (6.81-7.80 x103mm3) and the differential white blood cells improved significantly (p<0.05) following the oral administration of folic acids to the rabbit bucks. Thus, the oral administrations of folic acid at 5.0 mg per rabbit buck most significantly improved the semen characteristics, enhanced the overall spermatozoa morphology, reduced sperm cells abnormalities and also improved some haematological parameters of the rabbit bucks.