Within‐herd Use of Boar Semen at 5°C, with a Note on Electronic Monitoring of Oestrus

Abstract

A system was designed to allow a small swine farm in a northern latitude to use its own boars for artificial insemination (AI) conveniently. Semen was collected twice weekly for 3 day use (days 0, 1 and 2), extended in an egg yolk extender and stored at 5 degrees C. Farm personnel were trained to manage the entire AI programme. For simplicity all semen collected was used for insemination. In the first test 47 gilts and 15 sows were inseminated with semen from four boars. One boar was subfertile with a farrowing rate of 36%. The averages for the other boars ranged from 71 to 100%. Then semen was collected from seven boars and all was used to inseminate 70 gilts and 55 sows with 3 x 10(9) or more sperm. Overall 63% farrowed an average of 10.1 piglets per litter. Litter size for sows was 1.5 piglets larger than for gilts. There was no difference in farrowing rate when more than 3 x 10(9) sperm were inseminated. The feasibility of initiating a complete AI programme within a small herd using herd boars was established. However, selection of the boars, use of only high quality semen, and experience with detecting oestrus was required to increase the farrowing rate. The use of various agents to protect sperm against cold shock below 15 degrees C is worthy of further investigation. A new type of electronic probe, which measures the conductivity of cervical mucus, could be helpful if a boar is not available for conventional detection of oestrus.

Viability and fertility of cooled equine semen diluted with skimmed milk or glycine egg yolk-based extenders

“…One part was diluted in Kenney extender, a skimmed milk based extender (Kenney et al, 1975), commonly used for dilution of stallion semen. The other part was diluted in Foote extender, a glycine-egg yolk based extender (Foote, 2002) used for dilution of boar semen. After the dilution, both the parts were packaged in aliquots containing 12 mL of diluted semen with final concentration of 30 × 10 6 viable sperm/mL, and stored in a container (Equitainer ® ; Hamilton Research, Inc. 66 Woodland Mead, South Hamilton, MA, USA) at 6-8 °C for 24 hours.…”

“…In this regard, the semen extenders that are commonly used for cooling of boar semen may be adapted for use in storage of stallion cooled semen for better fertility results. A glycine egg yolk-based extender (Foote, 2002) was used for cooling of boar semen and the sperm motility did not decline more than 10% during 2 days of storage at various temperatures (5, 15 or 25 °C). The same extender maintained the fertility of donkey semen after dilution and cooling at 5 °C for 12 hours (Rossi et al, 2012), showing promising results for adaptation for use in cooling of stallion semen.…”

“…The objective of the present study was to evaluate and compare the in vitro viability and in vivo fertility of stallion semen stored at low temperature (6-8 °C) for 24 hours using an extender (Kenney extender, a skimmed powdered milk-based extender; Kenney et al, 1975) that is commonly used in stallion semen dilution and an extender (Foote extender, a glycine-egg yolk-based extender; Foote, 2002) that is used for boar semen.…”

Effect of month of conception on fertility of mares inseminated with jackass semen

“…T1 -Mares inseminated with fresh semen diluted in skim milk-glucose (Kenney et al, 1983) extender, using an insemination dose of 20mL and 400 x 10 6 motile spermatozoa (n=33); T2 -Mares inseminated with fresh semen diluted in egg yolk-glycine (Foote, 2002) extender, using an insemination dose of 20mL and 400 x 10 6 motile spermatozoa (n=44); T3 -Mares inseminated with semen diluted in skim milk-glucose (Kenney et al, 1983), using an insemination dose of 20mL and 400 x 10 6 motile spermatozoa, previously cooled and stored for 12 hours at 5° C in a special container (Palhares, 1997) …”

“…T4 -Mares inseminated with semen diluted in egg yolk-glycine (Foote, 2002) extender, using an insemination dose of 20mL and 400 x 10 6 motile spermatozoa, previously cooled and stored for 12 hours at 5°C in a special container (Palhares, 1997) (n=102).…”