Comparison of two methods to assess the concentration of dog semen

JESUS DORADO; NARCISO DUARTE; LUCRECIA ALCARAZ; JOSE MANUEL PORTERO; DANIEL ACHA VALLS; ISABEL ORTIZ; SEBASTIÁN DEMYDA PEYRÁS; ANDRES MUÑOZ SERRANO; MANUEL HIDALGO

Antalya

Conferencia; The 15th Annual Conference of the European Society for Domestic Animal Reproduction (ESDAR); 2011

ESDAR ( European Society for Domestic Animal Reproduction)

The aims of this study were to: (i) compare two used techniques to determine dog semen concentration; (ii) assess the influence of dilution rate on photometric readouts. Twenty one ejaculates were collected from four dogs. Each ejaculate was analyzed for sperm concentration by the Thoma chamber (golden standard) and the photometer SpermaCue. Thereafter, the original semen samples were diluted to obtain three dilutions of known concentration (100?150 · 106, 151? 200 · 106 and 201?300 · 106 sperm/ml) and analysed for sperm concentration with a SpermaCue. Each semen sample was assessed five times with each method, and the repeatability, expressed as intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), was determined. Data were compared by ANOVA and Pearson?s correlations. Significant (p < 0.001) and high correlations (r = 0.759) were found between the results obtained by the two methods used in this study. The SpermaCue also showed a very good repeatability for assessing sperm concentration of raw semen based on ICC (0.90). For extended semen, the repeatability of the SpermaCue was very good for the three dilutions (ICC > 0.94). Based on our findings, the SpermaCue was sufficiently accurate to be used for the determination of sperm concentration of raw and extended dog semen, and it makes it possible to examine a large number of samples very easily and in a short period of time.