Reducing Cell Density in Boar Semen Doses
Save Up to 15-20% in Expenses With a NucleoCounter® SP-100™
The NucleoCounter® SP-100™ is a unique cell counter which improves the credibility of the sperm count in a boar semen sample and can provide direct economic advantages. As the co-efficient of variation is below 3%, less cells are needed when producing semen doses to ensure a specific minimum number of cells are present in 95% of the doses.
Using an extender does not interfere with the instrument’s high precision, as propidium iodide is used to stain DNA directly.
NucleoCounter® SP-100™ Gives Economic Benefits
Reducing the number of cells required per dose enables boar stations to produce more doses with the same number of boars – or to reduce the number of boars.
By culling the lowest ranking boars, you can save money on feed, stalls, medication and other expenditures. At the same time, the genetic index will be increased. Typically, you can save up to 15-20% in expenses when you replace a photometer with the NucleoCounter® SP-100™.
These savings have been confirmed by many customers who use the NucleoCounter® SP-100™, such as Danish Pig Production, who has used the instrument in every single station in Denmark for over 10 years. Other customers include Topigs Norsvin in the Netherlands and Norway, PIC in the UK and US, Carlo Genetics in Canada, GFS and NORT in Germany and CobiPorc in France.
Graph 1 shows the variations when counting a single semen dose several times with a photometer or even with a CASA system. The target concentration in this example is 3 billion cells in a dose in average. The green box is the ± 5% coefficient of variation (CV) on the average that you want to be within for reproducible data generation. The red line at 2 billion cells is the lower threshold for fertility. The measurements (the red dots) vary significantly due to the variations from the photometer (or CASA system).
Graph 2 shows the measurements (of the same dose) with the NucleoCounter® SP-100™ (the green dots). The CV for the SP-100™ is lower than 3% and therefore, the measurements are much more similar and well within the green box indicating the 5% CV interval.
Graphs 3 and 4 show that due to the much better repeatability for the NucleoCounter® SP-100™ the average number of cells contained in a dose can be reduced. In this example, the number of cells can be reduced to an average of 2,2 billion cells/dose – without risking shipping doses with less than 2 billion cells that would impair litter size.