Supplementing Fatty Acids to Improve Sperm Characteristics

Artificial insemination via cooled or frozen-shipped semen allows more mares to be bred to a single stallion, but not all stallions produce semen capable of withstanding the cooling and freezing procedures. Aurich et al. (1996) estimated that cooled or frozen-shipped semen achieves < 75% of the pregnancy rates achieved with fresh semen. Some factors affecting the fertility rates of thawed semen are (a) differences in individual seminal plasma composition, (b) concentration of seminal plasma present in the sample and (c) changes in plasma membrane integrity during the freezing/thawing processes.