How to Improve Stallion Fertility?
I have a young (4-year-old) Dutch warmblood stallion with some fertility issues. However, he has had good fertility and a good sperm cell count. He has low motility, some poor morphology, and some dead and immature sperm cells. The longevity of his semen is good.
We want to ship the best-quality semen we can achieve. We have tried different extenders and collecting him into extender (which makes counting sperm cells inaccurate) without improving the quality. Is there anything we can do to improve motility? What do you think of using agnus castus (vitex)?
AIn evaluating stallion fertility, several step-by-step questions need to be answered to sort out the key issues. First, what is good fertility? We usually look at first cycle conception rate as an indicator of fertility. This is the percentage of mares that get pregnant the first cycle they are bred. The higher the value, the fewer breedings needed to get mares in foal. This percentage should be 65% or greater.
Is the "good" fertility achieved with shipped semen or with extended semen used to inseminate mares on the farm? If some mares are bred on the farm and some with shipped semen, they must be looked at as different groups to calculate fertility
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