TURKEY HEN FERTILITY AFTER INSEMINATION WITH VARIED SEMEN DOSAGE OR NATURAL MATING

Abstract

The study was carried out to assess the fertility of locally adapted turkey hens after artificial insemination with varied semen dosage or natural mating. Sixty white – feathered local turkey hens were grouped into five treatments of twelve hens each in a completely randomised design. Semen was harvested from seventeen toms, pooled and inseminated into hens in groups one to four each with 0.02 mL (SD0.02), 0.04 mL (SD0.04), 0.06 mL (SD0.06) and 0.08 mL (SD0.08) of undiluted semen, containing approximately 80x106, 160x106, 240x106 and 320x106 motile sperm cells, respectively. Hens in group five (NM) were mated naturally with three other toms at a mating ratio of one tom to four hens. Insemination and mating were
done once daily for two successive days only, after which eggs were collected and incubated weekly for 10 weeks. Candling was done at day 25 of incubation and candling clears were broken out to separate infertile eggs from fertile eggs with embryonic deaths to determine percentage fertility. Data was collected on weekly fertility. Analysis was done on square root transformed data using ANOVA at α0.05. Average fertility at the first three weeks post-insemination / mating in SD0.02 (94.2%), SD0.04 (95.1%), SD0.06 (98.0) and SD0.08 (93.8%) were significantly (p˂0.05) higher than NM (70.4%). The efficient duration of fertile period of the turkey hens was three weeks while their maximum duration of fertile period was eight weeks. Semen insemination dosage of 0.02mL containing approximately 80x106 motile sperm cells was an economic dose
for insemination.