FERTILITY AND DURATION OF FERTILE PERIOD IN BROILER BREEDER HENS INSEMINATED WITH VARIED SEMEN DOSES

Abstract

One hundred and twenty Marshall broiler breeder hens aged 32 weeks were used to assess the effect of varying insemination doses on egg fertility and duration of fertile period. The hens were randomly allotted into five treatments of twenty four hens each in a completely randomized design. Semen was harvested from 10 cocks, using abdominal message technique, pooled and evaluated for semen quality. Hens in T1 were inseminated with 0.02 mL semen (containing 5x10⁶ motile spermatozoa), hens in T2, T3, and T4 were inseminated with 0.04, 0.06 and 0.08 mL of semen, respectively, while hens on T5 were exposed to natural mating at a ratio of one cock to four hens. Both mating processes were repeated for two successive days. Eggs were collected daily and incubated weekly for four weeks to determine egg fertility as influenced by semen doses and oviductal sperm age. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA at α_0.05. At the first week, fertility in T1 (94.3±1.9%), T2 (94.5±3.2%), T3 (95.2±1.9%) and T4 (97.1±2.9%) were significantly higher than T5 (76.9±3.0%). Fertility up till 7 days of oviductal sperm age in inseminated hens was above 90%, but reduced to 87.0±4.7% and 74.2±9.3% at days 8 and 9, respectively and declined to zero fertility in day 22. It could be concluded in this study that semen insemination dose of 0.02 mL is lease economic dose with optimum fertility in broiler breeder hens. The maximum duration of fertility period in broiler breeder hens was 21days, while efficiency in fertility reduced after 8 days.