A study of some factors influencing conception rates in dairy cows in Manitoba

Abstract

Within the last twenty years an outstanding advancement in the field of animal production has been made through the adoption of the method of artifical insemination in breeding of females. While artificial insemination has been practiced in a crude, haphazard manner for hundreds of years, only within the last two decades has sufficient knowledge and refinement of techniques been available to assure its practical and economical feasibility. Artificial insemination may be defined as the deposition of semen containing spermatozoa, the male reproductive cells, in the female genitalia by instrument rather than by natural methods. Since only a very small fraction of the total ejaculate of a sire is required to bring about fertilization, it follows therefore, that a tremendous wastage in spermatazoa occurs at every natural breeding. In artificial insemination the total volume of the semen from an ejaculate is divided into many small portions, thereby extending the number of females to which a male may be bred. Modern techniques permit a sire artificially to serve possibly ten thousand females in a lifetime. Under natural conditions the same sire might serve two hundred.