Abstract

The study was conducted from December 2019 to May 2020 to evaluate the efficiency of local convectional semen and imported sexed semen on in vivo produced bovine embryo quality in Boran and HB cross breed donor cows in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. In this study, it was hypothesized that the breed of donor cows and types of semen can influence the quality of in vivo produced embryo as well as the number of transferable embryos. Randomized experimental design was employed, and a total of 20 donor cows (10 Boran and 10H*B cross) were superovulated and flushed excluding non-responsive donor cows. Donor cows were randomly assigned to two groups: Group-1- five donors inseminated with sexed semen and group-2- five other cows inseminated with convectional semen from each breed. The results of study showed that the embryo recovery rate was 68% in H*B crossbreds and 53% in Boran donor cows. A total of 121 embryos were produced of which, 60 were transferable embryos (36 from H*B crossbreds and 24 from Boran), 39 UFOs (31 from H*B crossbreds and 8 from Boran) and 22 degenerated embryos (12 from HB cross and 10 from Boran). The results of this study showed that the number of transferable embryos produced from donors inseminated with sexed semen and convectional semen was nearly similar. However, the number of defective embryos tended to be higher with sexed semen and the number of unfertilized oocytes is significantly (p<0.05) higher in crossbred cows. This finding suggests that farmer can use sexed semen to get sex specific dairy calves in both cattle genotypes.

Key words: Breed, donor cows, superovulation.