Date of Graduation

Fall 2023

Degree

Master of Science in Agriculture

Department

College of Agriculture

Committee Chair

Gary Webb

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that removing seminal plasma and resuspension of the sperm pellet in various diluents will improve the post-storage motility of spermatozoa from some stallions. This typically involves centrifugation. However, a sperm filtering device marketed by Botupharma (Phoenix, AZ) allows seminal plasma removal without a centrifuge. This study compared spermatozoa recovery rates using this device vs. centrifugation with and without a cushion. Thirteen ejaculates were collected from three quarter horse stallions. Prior to treatment, aliquots were diluted with Dulbecco's modified PBS at a dilution rate of 1:1. For the two centrifugation treatments, 12 ml of the diluted semen was placed in a 15 ml conical bottom tube and centrifuged at 1000g for 20 minutes with Red Cushion™, (Botupharma), or at 400g for 10 minutes without a cushion. Aliquots for the third treatment were also diluted 1:1, and 20 ml of the solution pour into the SpermFilter™ (Botupharma) for separation. The aliquots' concentration before and after dilution, filtration, or centrifugation was measured using a densimeter device (ARS, Chino, CA). In addition, following all procedures, the sperm pellet was resuspended with the same solution and again subjected to analysis for concentration with the Densimeter to determine the % of spermatozoa recovered. Data was analyzed by One-way ANOVA with Tukey's test for pairwise comparisons. Average % recovery rates were 69.4% and 60.9% for aliquots centrifuged without and with a cushion, compared to 77.6% for the SpermFilter™ treatment. In this experiment, the % recovery was lower (P

Keywords

stallion, sperm filter, centrifugation, cushion, sperm recovery

Subject Categories

Animal Sciences

Copyright

© Holly S. Hopkins

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Open Access

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