Back to: Animal Husbandry SS 3
Welcome to today’s class!!
We are thrilled to have you in our class!!
In today’s Animal Husbandry’s class, we will be learning about Advantages and Disadvantages of Artificial Insemination.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Artificial Insemination
Remember you were taught that when you hear about artificial Insemination, you should think about artificial first before insemination. After that, you can combine your knowledge of what each means.
You also learned that artificial insemination is the process of collecting sperm cells from a male animal and manually depositing them into the reproductive tract of a female.
From this definition, it is clear that it is possible for a female animal to have babies without the male animal coming close. Because artificial Insemination will give room for sperm cells from a male animal to be deposited into the reproductive tract of a female.
What Are The Advantages of AI?
- Disease control. This is accomplished by preventing skin contact such as in natural service. The most important diseases it protects against are transmission of the herpesvirus- equine coital exanthema – and contagious equine metritis, which is caused by a bacteria. In addition antibiotics can be added to the semen at the time of insemination or collection and reduce or totally eliminate breeding the mare with any bacteria at all.
- Decreases chances of injury. Semen is generally only collected every other day in an AI programme, so there is much less chance for injury. In addition semen can be collected on a phantom and a mare in heat may not even be needed. Not only does this almost eliminate injury to the mare (if she didn’t want to get served) and stallion but also it dramatically reduces the chances of injury to those staff involved in the breeding shed. It may be in future that farms could be in legal trouble when staff are hurt and AI could have been used.
- Semen can be collected from stallions with problems. Each year stallions are either injured or have trouble breeding due to inherent libido (sexual behavior) problems. Because semen only needs to be collected every other day it reduces the effects of breeding pressure and injuries.
- Semen is evaluated each time it is collected. With AI we can look and measure parameters related to fertility every time we collect.
- Prevents stallion overuse.
- Allows more mares to be bred. AI lets the farmer divide the semen up into as many doses as he is capable of giving in an ejaculate.
What are the disadvantages of Artificial Insemination?
- Specialized equipment is needed. An artificial vagina (AV), thermometers, warmed containers and equipment non-spermicidal gel and equipment to measure motility (warmed stage microscope) and sperm concentration are all necessary for AI to be practiced properly. This is expensive and a well-equipped laboratory may cost in the vicinity of $40 000 just for the equipment (without the building and fittings).
- Technical expertise is needed. Personnel need to know how to make the AV so that it is right for the stallion and then how to collect and process the semen properly.
- Incorrectly practiced AI can cause problems. You would be surprised to learn just how often the wrong lubricating gel is used in the AV and that there have been weeks before anyone realized that the pregnancy rates were disastrous.
In summary, while artificial Insemination will give room for sperm cells from a male animal to be deposited into the reproductive tract of a female doing it wrongly can bring harm to the animals, however a successful artificial insemination can help disease control. This is accomplished by preventing skin contact such as in natural service.
Evaluation
What is Artificial Insemination?
Reading Assignment
Give five advantages of Artificial Insemination
Weekend Assignment
Give two disadvantages of Artificial Insemination
We hope you enjoyed today’s class. In our next class, we will be learning about Farm Animals Diseases and Agents.
Let us know your thoughts and questions in the comment section, and we will attend to them as fast as we can.
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