European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

EFFECT OF DIFFERENT HORMONAL REGIMES ON FERTILITY IMPROVEMENT OF ARTIFICIALLY INSEMINATED SUB-FERTILE NEW ZEALAND DOE RABBITS

*Amal M. Hassan, Abd El- Hamid I. S. and El-Bahrawy K. A.

ABSTRACT

Forty eight sub-fertile doe rabbits with no conception rate, repeated mating and low receptivity to male during natural mating were used in this experiment. The females were allocated into three experimental groups for different treatments for improving their reproductive performance; namely; the first group was treated with pregnant mare serum gonadotropin PMSG, while the second group was treated by PGF2α + PMSG. The third group received (5ml/doe/day) of sunflower oil (SF) for 5 days, followed by PMSG injection. After 54 h from the PMSG injection in all treatments, all does were artificially inseminated with diluted raw semen followed by Gn-RH dose for induction of ovulation. The results showed that (PMSG) treated group demonstrated the highest (P<0.05) receptivity (69.57%), followed by the (PGF2α + PMSG) treatment (40.00%). Both treatments were significantly higher than using (SF + PMSG) with only (10%) observed receptivity. Mathematically, the overall mean for the effect of different treatments regardless of the vulva colour showed superiority of the (PMSG) treatment (47.91%), as compared to the (PGF2α + PMSG) treatment receptivity (31.25%). In the same frame, mathematically the overall indication of red coloured vulva gave a high indication of receptivity of New Zealand doe rabbits (66.66%), compared to the white or pink colour of the vulva, showing receptivity percentage (31.25%) and (20.83), respectively (Table 3). Both (PMSG) and (PGF2α + PMSG) groups showed a significant superiority for conception rate (73.91% and 66.67%, respectively) compared to the (SF + PMSG) treatment with only (10%) conception. The same aforementioned effect trend of the treatments was observed for litter size after parturition, being (5.08±0.71, 4.47±0.88 and 1.4±1.07) for (PMSG), (PGF2α + PMSG) and (SF + PMSG) treatments, respectively. In conclusion, both (PMSG) and (PGF2α + PMSG) treatments promote the sexual receptivity to sub-fertile doe rabbits, specially does with low receptivity and repeated refusal of natural mating. It could be recommended that, an appropriate hormonal treatment and application of AI using fresh diluted semen can be a solution for fertility improvement and increasing fertility potential of sub-fertile doe rabbits under semi-arid conditions which may affect the normal reproductive behavior and the reproductive efficiency of rabbit herds.

Keywords: Artificial insemination, Doe rabbits, Sunflowers, Synchronization, Litter size, Semen, Conception rate.