Volunteer program | Ag Canada and University of Saskatchewan collecting purebred samples
STRATHMORE, Alta. — Vapours waft around Carl Lessard like witch’s brew when he opens the styrofoam box containing liquid nitrogen.
He carefully places thin straws on a specially designed rack and lowers them into an environment of -196 C.
It is the final step in his on-farm collection of livestock semen.
“Once they are frozen they will keep forever,” Lessard said, a gamete and embryo biologist who is collecting semen from purebred livestock and poultry to preserve their genetics for the Canadian Animal Genetic Resources program.
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A joint initiative of Agriculture Canada and the University of Saskatchewan, it aims to preserve the genetic diversity of Canadian purebreds and develop new techniques to conserve germplasm.
The voluntary program is one way to bank valuable genetics in the event a breed is lost or a disease wipes out a large population.
“My goal is to try and protect genetic diversity,” he said.
Lessard travelled to Alberta in late October to collect chicken and goat semen.
One of his visits was to Givernay Farms, owned by Adam Scanlan, a purebred Saanen and Toggenburg breeder who was interested in the program to conserve goat genetics and supplement his breeding program.
Under the program, he donated half the collection and kept the rest for his own use on his Strathmore area farm.
Most of his bucks are proven with kids on the ground, but he wants the semen as a back-up plan or to rotate breeding programs in the future.
“I can pull out the right straw from the right buck for the right doe. It gives me a lot of breeding power,” he said.
Scanlan sells breeding stock to other goat producers and also supplies replacement stock to dairies. He is looking for improved milk production and structural soundness among his herd.
When Lessard arrives, he checks the testicles for size and firmness. If they feel mushy, they may not produce semen, which is drawn with an electro-ejaculator. Each sample is dropped into a test tube and prepared for storage.
The semen is slowly cooled to 4 C and mixed with an extender made from powdered skim milk, fructose and antibiotics. Goat semen contains an enzyme and reacts if an egg based mixture is used.
The final product is mixed with glycerol to protect the cells during the freezing process. Water in the cells freeze when sperm is frozen, which could kill the cells.
“The glycerol is so tiny, it is able to penetrate the cells and displaces the water. The water is pulled out of the cells,” Lessard said.
The mixture is injected into .25 cc straws, placed in liquid nitrogen and taken to Saskatoon for safe storage. Some of the samples are thawed after they are frozen to examine the sperm’s viability because samples don’t freeze well in some animals.
The program is looking for a variety of samples and is willing to attempt to collect semen from the testicles of valuable animals that died. Researchers are also interested in embryos and can also collect feathers for genetic diversity by checking DNA.
