Veterinary Andrology and Reproductive Techniques

CONCENTRATION OF SPERMATOZOA

• Accurate determination of the number of sperm and volume of the ejaculate determines how many females can be inseminated.
• Concentration is measured by hemocytometer, colorimeter, or spectrophotometer.
• The later method are precise and fast and thus, preferred in large farms.
• However, they are not accurate with contaminated semen, and addition of cloudy extenders prior to estimation of concentration can confound results.
• Sperm concentration ranges from 800 to 1500 millions/ml in bulls.
• The total number of spermatozoa in millions per ml of neat semen is determined by using an improved neubaur counting chamber (Salisbury et al., 1943) after a dilution of 1:200 with buffered spermicide.