Epididymal Sperm Harvest And Freezing

Abstract

Artificial insemination of captive cervids is becoming more popular. As with raising traditional domestic species, deer farmers strive to improve the genetics of their herd in order to increase the value of their animals. Using advanced reproductive technologies is often a more economical way of accomplishing this without incurring the tremendous expense of purchasing a high quality breeding buck. Having the ability to harvest and preserve epididymal sperm from a deceased valuable breeding buck is of great value to a deer farmer. Moreover, being able to preserve sperm from a hunter-killed trophy buck can prove to be an economical method of adding quality genetics to a deer herd. It has been shown that successful pregnancies have been achieved by using epididymal sperm for artificial insemination.1 This manuscript describes methods of shipping testicles, harvesting epididymal sperm, sperm analysis, and sperm processing.