Key Benefits:
Bacterial contamination will destroy the semen.
Proper testing and storage provides viable breeding sperm.
Semen Evaluation
The boar has a natural ability to compensate for the adverse side effects of bacterial contamination with an overabundance of sperm. By producing the maximum number of doses with the minimum number of cells, the artificial insemination process eliminates this natural ability of the boar. Consequently, artificial insemination requires established quality control procedures for sanitation, collection, and proper antibiotic use to minimize the risk of reduced fertility resulting from bacterial contamination of the semen.
- Semen is made up of sperm – produced in the testes – and seminal fluids produced in the accessory glands. Sperm takes up to 8 weeks to reach maturity following initial cell division and the testes operate as a production line with sperm at all stages of development. It, therefore, follows that if anything happens to the boar to damage this system, it can take up to 8 weeks for new mature sperm to be produced. Heat, disease and toxins can do such damage.
- Conversely if the boar does no service for 10 days or more the likelihood will be that the stored sperm will have de-generated to the point where the next ejaculate will be substandard.
- Sperm can be produced from boars of 5 months old or younger but it is unlikely in most cases that a reliable ejaculate would be produced before 7 months old. However, maturity is unlikely to be achieved before 14 months, by which time it would be appropriate to use the boar to his maximum. In most boars, semen production will reduce with ageing beyond 2 years, although they may not occur early enough in life to be of practical significance – most boars being culled due to size, aggression or genetic drag before this de-generation occurs.
- Current artificial insemination (AI) protocols use 2.5-3.0 billion sperm cells per insemination dose.
- A single dose of AI contains about 2 billion sperm: litter size and farrowing rates are optimal with semen that was less than 36 hour old, and AI was performed less than -28 hour prior to ovulation
- Most studies indicate that 2 billion cells will not limit reproduction, but fewer cells reduces performance and higher cell numbers provide little or no advantage
Semen Standards
- To manage a boar stud effectively one must understand the minimum ejaculate standards that you are looking for in semen production. A minimum set of standards have been suggested:
- Semen temperature should be above 34º C (93º F) coming into the lab.
- Volume of the ejaculate must be greater than 50 ml.
- Sperm cell concentration should be greater than 100 million/ml.
Gross morphology
Head defects: <10%
Tail defects: <20%
Proximal droplets: <10%
Total normal: >70%
The goal of all these standards is to make sure the semen dose will contain greater than 2.5 billion viable cells at the time of insemination. Some units will use less conservative numbers and still have acceptable reproductive performance in the sow herds.
Semen Testing and Storage
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