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Production only of females / Spermatic selection

Spermatozoa in semen are sorted in order to inseminate sows with only X spermatozoa so that they only give birth to female piglets.

The flow cytometry, shown in the diagram, is a technique used at lab level to perform the spermatic selection.


Advantages and Disadvantages compared to surgical castration without anaesthesia:

1

Compared to surgical castration without anaesthesia, what do you expect the advantages and disadvantages of producing only females/spermatic selection to be?
For each of the factors below, indicate whether you think that the technique will bring an advantage, a disadvantage or will have a neutral impact, choosing from the pull-down list.

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
i)

Yes all your choices are correct.

  1. Pain, stress and health consequences = Advantage, as the selection is spermatic there's no pain in the life animal whereas during the castration there is a surgical procedure.
  2. Incidence of boar taint appearing in meat products = Neutral: with respect to the castrated without anaesthesia there should be no differences on the level of boar taint. Both of them have low-risk of having tainted carcasses.
  3. Cost of feeding = Advantage because cost of feeding is reduced due to a better feed conversion in females than in castrated males.
  4. Proportion of lean meat in the carcass = Advantage. Females have leaner carcasses than castrated male pigs. However, when we compare them to the entire male pigs, they are fatter.
  5. Levels of aggression and mounting behaviour in the herd, and ease of management = Neutral because behaviour of females is similar to that observed in castrated males. In both cases there is no mounting behaviour and there is low incidence of aggression.
  6. Need for slaughter line system to detect boar taint = Neutral because with this technique there is low risk of having tainted carcasses.
  7. How practical the technique is for use at farm level = Disadvantage because it is not available at farm-level, it is only available at laboratory level. There is still a long way to go before it can be applied in practice.
  8. Other production costs excluding feeding = Disadvantage because the cost of reproduction would be increased. The technique itself is very expensive.
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