In addition to strengthening the management of breeding boars, supporting the construction of breeding boar stations, increasing the investment in equipment, ensuring the quality of semen, and establishing a service network, the unified supply of semen to pigs also needs to address several key aspects, which are described as follows:
I. Cleanliness and hygiene
- Breeding boar’s health regularly clean the pigsty every day, train the breeding boar to eat, sleep and defecate three-point positioning, so that the breeding boar to maintain a good living environment. Keep the trough clean, trough at least once a week with a high-pressure cleaner; each feeding before checking the quality of feed, found moldy and deteriorated feed to be destroyed, shall not be fed to the breeding boar; timely sweeping of feces and urine in the pigsty, to reduce the opportunity of the boar’s body and prepuce contamination; regular brushing of the boar’s body, to remove dust and dander on the breeder’s body: the barn every week to disinfect the pig with the pig 2 times.
- Sperm collection room and sperm collection personnel’s health sperm collection room should be clean, dry, fake table pigs every day after the sperm collection should be disinfected. Sperm collectors wear overalls and sanitary caps to prevent hair and dander from falling off and contaminating the semen. Sperm collectors must wear gloves when collecting semen to prevent cross-contamination of semen, and at the same time, they must regularly trim their nails to prevent long nails from scratching the gloves and contaminating the semen. Don’t collect the semen in the first part of the process, and tie up the semen bag and cover the lid of the thermos cup immediately after the semen collection.
- Semen handling Clean the laboratory regularly every day to minimize the dust on the floor, countertop, walls and ceiling of the laboratory. Semen dilution personnel must enter the laboratory to change the work clothes and shoes and hats. After each use of sperm collection cups, dilution cups, glass rods and dilution powder bottles to be thoroughly cleaned, and ensure that the distilled water cleaned twice, and then disinfected, rinsed with diluent before use.
- Pay attention to cleanliness during insemination to reduce the occurrence of uterine inflammation. Put the test boar in front of the estrous sow to stimulate the sow. Clean the vulva, tail root and around the buttocks of the sow with 0.1% potassium permanganate solution in water, and wipe the vulva of the sow clean with clean toilet paper. Gently mix the semen so that it is evenly distributed in the insemination vial, and insert the insemination tube into the sow’s vagina. Paying attention to the above details is one of the reliable guarantees to ensure that the sow’s uterus is not contaminated.
Temperature control
- Preparation before semen collection in semen collection before all contact with semen items, including gloves, semen cups, semen bottles, etc., all to be in the thermostat 37 ℃ preheating, to ensure that in the semen collection and semen contact with the temperature of the items is slightly lower than the temperature of the semen, the diluent is placed in advance in the 37 ℃ water bath preheating, to ensure that diluent mixing uniformly. Laboratory air conditioning is set according to the outside temperature to ensure that the laboratory temperature is about 25 ℃.
- semen dilution semen collection semen immediately after the semen quality inspection, including semen color, odor, vitality and density, etc., according to the results of the appropriate dilution. The temperature difference between the diluted semen and the original semen should not be higher than 2℃, otherwise the sperm vitality of the diluted semen will be seriously affected.
- semen packaging, preservation and transportation semen dilution should be immediately after the packaging, from the thermostat to remove the semen bottles, so that the temperature difference between the diluted semen and semen bottles is not higher than 2 ℃. It is not advisable to put the semen into the 17℃ incubator for storage immediately after the semen is dispensed, and the semen should be placed in the incubator at room temperature (25℃) for about 10-20min, and then put it into the incubator after it cools down slowly. A thermostat should be applied during semen transportation to ensure that the viability of the spermatozoa is not affected in any way.
III. Personnel training and policy support
The unified sperm supply of pigs is related to the quality of their offspring, especially the implementation of unified sperm supply has a greater impact, the use of artificial insemination technology, a boar can breed thousands of tens of thousands of piglets a year. It can be seen that raising a good boar and improving the quality of breeding can breed more and better healthy piglets, which is very important to improve the quality and quantity of pig herds. Therefore, there should be technicians in charge of the introduction and selection of breeding pigs, breeding management, conditioning, use and so on, and technicians should be trained frequently to improve their professional skills. In addition, the implementation of unified sperm supply, equipment investment is large, the cost is high, in the beginning of the implementation of certain policy support is needed.
