Today was day 2 at the boar stud location for my internship. I was once again put on the floor to help the guys collect semen. We started at 3:30 AM because we needed to fill over 2,400 doses of semen for the day's orders.
I helped feed the boars right away in the morning. This consisted of pushing a cart around and dumping scoops of feed into their crates. I then assisted with semen collection for the first hour our so, just to help the guys get going for the day. I then learned how to mark which boars needed to be collected that day by placing stickers on their crates. The stickers tell you which genetic line they are, how many days since their last collection, and how many doses they averaged through their life.
I worked the rest of the day in the lab marking which boars had been collected, running samples to the lab technician, mixing samples, mixing batches for the "bagging" machine, cleaning, and just learning how to do stuff with the computers. I helped pack up tomorrow's orders for shipment (they needed to be shipped tonight in order to arrive tomorrow), and got to hand the deliver guy the "grocery bags" of delivery semen for today's orders. I didn't do a lot today as everything I did was very repetitive. We made over 2,400 doses of semen, I believe that was about 15 batches of semen. They have four different genetic lines, so you have to keep straight which lines go into which batches. It gets confusing, but once you get the process down, its fairly simple.
Friday:
Today was my last day at boar stud. This morning I did a lot of the same stuff as yesterday. I did learn how to prepare slides for the microscope and how to analyze semen. I learned how to count the dead sperm, how to analyze motility, and count drip tails or broken tails. I then learned how to do all the math for concentrations. Concentrations vary between 2.5 billion and 3 billion sperm per bag (depending on the farm preferences that orders the semen).
I also got to help mix more batches today and got to see the "bagging" machine that puts the semen into little baggies that are used for storage and handling. Each baggie receives about 70 grams of the specified semen concentration and is then melted at the top to seal it. While the baggie is receiving the semen the machine simultaneously places a sticker on the bag to specify batch number, date collected, and genetic line of the boars that were used in that batch. The baggies then were placed on a tray that is put on a rack and wheeled into the cold room to cool off. Once the semen was cooled the bags were placed into insulated bags that contained cool packs to keep it cool during deliver. We then handed the "grocery bags" of delivery semen for today's orders to the deliver man, and we were done for the day! It was a short day today as we only had 1,200 ordered doses, half of what yesterdays count was!
This is the machine that we used to fill the baggies, iron them shut, and put stickers on. This machine can bag up to 1,000 doses per hour, but at our boar stud, we switch between four different genetic lines, causing us to need to change our tubing after every batch.
These are similar to the baggies that we use for semen storage. When I bred at the farrowing barn last week, these were the baggies that I placed at the end of the AI rods when inseminating the sows.
This is a typical picture of boar sperm. This batch would be bad, for example, because a majority of the tails are immature, causing the sperm to be immobile. Only straight tails are good for motility, otherwise they swim around in circles and don't go anywhere! :)
Well, that is all I have for this week!
<3 Roz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw2ZqMmNnis
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