The hog industry has semen myths and semen beliefs but few semen facts.
That leaves producers’ knowledge of semen production and quality dreadfully weak, says a leading Quebec researcher.
“We have been a bit lazy in the way we feed boars,” Jacques Matte of Agriculture Canada’s Dairy and Swine Research and Development Centre said in an interview during the Manitoba Swine Seminar.
“We always used to assume that what we gave to a gestating sow was good enough for a boar.”
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Matte said boar semen is important for commercial hog producers trying to maximize efficiency, but little work has been done to study semen production or quality.
This has allowed myths to develop about semen production, with little checking of their scientific veracity.
For example, Matte said many producers believe omega 3 supplementation is a “miracle product” for improving semen quality and survival, but work at his lab has found no improvement.
He said research is lacking in this area because people assume they know what boars need and few have the combination of cash and incentive to do so.
Matte said it should be obvious why nutrition that is ideal for a gestating sow is not necessarily ideal for optimal semen production.
“The gestating sow needs to maximize the uterine environment and fetal growth. Semen quality and semen production is so different to fetal growth.”
Producers naturally mated boars with sows until 20 years ago.
This method delivered large amounts of semen in each mating, which gave each sow an extremely high chance of becoming pregnant.
“Even if the semen production is not optimal, it will be no problem,” said Matte.
However, the widespread adoption of artificial insemination means each ejaculation of semen is divided into 20 doses and quality becomes a far greater concern.
Instead of a boar naturally mating with three sows in two weeks, those three semen extractions are now used to inseminate 60 sows.
“If it’s five percent inadequate, he will inseminate fewer sows,” said Matte.
Boar nutrition research receives short shrift partly because there is little money to be made feeding boars, he added.
There are only a few thousand in Canada, compared to millions of sows and tens of millions of feeder animals.
As a result, he said feed companies don’t see much value in funding research that will help only 5,000 boars.
He said that’s why most of the support for his research come from artificial insemination centres.
“A nutrition company is into volume (of feed sold), but an AI company is concerned about semen production and quality,” said Matte.
