Collection and freezing of equine epididymal spermatozoa

The first report of a foal born after artificial insemination (AI) with frozen/thawed semen, more than fifty years ago, was the result of insemination with epididymal spermatozoa (Barker en Gandier, 1957). Ever since, reports have confirmed pregnancies and/ or births after AI with epididymal semen, which proves the fertilizing capacity of epididymal semen (Morris, 2002; Monteiro et al., 2011). Since billions of fertile spermatozoa can be harvested from the epididymis and ductus deferens of stallions, this sperm reservoir opens possibilities for applications in practice. For instance, when a breeding stallion requires an elective (hemi) castration or dies suddenly, a final attempt can be made to collect epididymal semen in order to preserve his genetics for future offspring. In this paper, the anatomy of the testis and epididymis, and the different steps that need to be performed in order to collect and preserve epididymal semen are BSTRACT