Practical use of bioenergetic evaluation of sire-bulls with different quality of semen production

Abstract

For modern cattle industry, it is very important to evaluate bull-sires of different breeds by semen quality. The relevance of this problem arises in the context of development of artificial insemination technologies and biotechnology, the increasing role of sire-bulls in the genetic improvement of the herd, which makes it possible to significantly change the breed composition of herds in large regions in a short period of time. In cattle breeding, sires of Black-and-white and Holstein black-and-white breeds, which are imported into the Russian Federation, are used almost throughout the country. The purpose of the study is to assess the practical possibility of using the measured data of the bioelectric potential of superficially localized biologically active centres of sire-bulls to evaluate the quality of their semen production. The subject of the study was the semen production of the bulls of Black-and-white and Holstein blackand-white breeds. The groups were formed according to the principle of analogues; the bulls were from 2 to 4 years old; the body weight was from 700 to 800 kg. As a result of evaluating the sperm quality in sire-bulls with a high level of biopotential of the superficially localized biologically active centres, in the field of vision of the preparation, spermatozoa with an intact acrosome were found, which amounted to 96.5% of the total number of spermatozoa of the preparation and had a significant difference with the experimental group. The use of bioenergetic data of the superficially localized biologically active centres makes it possible to evaluate the sperm quality before semen collection and thereby, reduce the time and labour costs for low-quality ejaculates culling.

Keywords

• bulls
• bioelectric potential level
• sperm
• acrosome
• superficially localized biologically active centres.