A new sexed semen breeding service has been launched for the sheep sector.
Specialist artificial breeding company AB Europe, which is offering the service in conjunction with livestock genetics specialist Cogent UK, says it will help breeders increase the rate of genetic gain in their flocks.
“The technology is set to mirror the results achieved by bovine genetics and artificial breeding companies, which now offer 90% gender accuracy and equivalent artificial insemination (AI) rates,” said AB Europe’s vet, James Mylne.
He said two options will be offered to breeders.
The first is 2M which uses a low dose of two million sperm cells per ml for commercial AI. The second – 4M – uses twice the concentration for AI for embryo transfer (ET) and AI with frozen semen.
In both options, the semen can be processed to provide an X sort for female sheep, or a Y sort for males.
Mr Mylne said large-scale trials using 2M semen were conducted on a flock of 400 commercial horned ewes last year.
A conception rate of 77% was achieved, with a 199% scan rate and 97% of the lambs born were female.
Mr Mylne said although the option to sex sheep semen has been around for 30 years, commercialisation has been slow due to a lack of trials.
“However, this season we are commercially offering fresh sexed semen and confident it can produce similar conception rates of conventional semen,” added Mr Mylne.