By Nicolas F. Koller and Carolina Da Silva
The negative effect of bacteria in semen quality depends on the sperm concentration of the AI doses in relation to the concentration of bacteria present, i.e. the sperm to bacteria ratio. We used flow cytometry to count the number of bacteria in boar AI doses and investigated the relationship between this initial contamination on semen quality.
In this study a viable sperm to bacteria ratio of 5.5 was observed, indicating low levels of contamination. Also, we did not observe a negative effect of this level of contamination on semen quality even after 72 hours of storage at 17°C.
