3 Animal Protein-Free Semen Extender for Fixed-Time Insemination of Beef Cows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Current semen cryopreservation protocols include the use of animal products, such as egg yolk, in semen extenders, which raises important biosecurity concerns related to the transmission of infectious agents. Therefore, there is a need for alternatives to animal proteins in semen extenders. Cholesterol-cyclodextrin (CC) has been used as an adjunct in semen extenders to facilitate the delivery of exogenous cholesterol into sperm plasma membranes. The purpose of this study was to determine the fertility potential of semen extended with cholesterol of plant origin (PhytoChol, Wilshire Technologies, NJ, USA) in a fixed-time insemination program for beef cows. Semen was collected by electroejaculation from mature Simmentals bulls (n = 4 bulls, 4 replicates/bull) and analysed using computer-assisted semen analysis (CASA). Ejaculates from different bulls with =200 × 106 sperm mL-1 and =60% total motility were pooled. The pooled ejaculates were distributed into 3 treatments and diluted to 50 × 106 mL-1 in Tris-citric-acid base extenders containing either egg yolk (20% vol/vol egg yolk, control), 0.5 mg of CC per mL of semen, or 1.0 mg of CC per mL of semen. Glycerol (7% vol/vol) was added to each extender. Extended semen was loaded into 0.5-mL straws and frozen to –196°C. Post-thaw sperm motility was analysed using CASA. Ovulation was synchronized among multiparous beef cows using 1 of 3 protocols: (1) 5-day intravaginal progesterone-releasing device (PRID) and prostaglandin F2a PGF2a) treatment on the day of PRID removal (n = 37 on random days of cycle); (2) oestradiol + progesterone treatment and 7-day PRID followed by PGF2a on the day of PRID removal (n = 37 on random days of cycle); or (3) PGF2a alone (n = 19 on Day 7 to 9 from ovulation). Cows were treated with gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) and assigned randomly to be inseminated with 1 of the 3 semen treatments 72 h after PGF2a treatment. Ovulations were confirmed and pregnancies were diagnosed 28 to 35 days after insemination by ultrasonography. Post-thaw sperm motility was compared among extenders by analysis of variance. Pregnancy rates were compared among groups by generalized linear mixed model. Total motility (52 ± 3%, 59 ± 3%, and 62 ± 7%) and progressive motility (47 ± 3%, 54 ± 3%, and 58 ± 6%) did not differ among the egg yolk, 0.5 mg CC, and 1.0 mg CC extenders, respectively. There were no differences in pregnancy rates among synchronization groups; therefore, data were combined to compare the effects of semen extender. Four cows were excluded due to improper synchronization treatment. Pregnancy rates of cows inseminated with egg yolk (n = 31), 0.5 mg CC (n = 31), and 1.0 mg CC (n = 27) semen were 32, 74, and 52%, respectively (P < 0.05). Fertility in cattle inseminated using semen extended with cholesterol of plant origin has not been previously reported. We conclude that plant cholesterol may be used to replace animal proteins (egg yolk or milk origin) in bovine semen cryopreservation. Research supported by grants from the Saskatchewan Agricultural Development Fund, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".