At present, in the case of pig farms to reduce costs and increase efficiency of many pathways are blocked, the "gene" level has become a key means of breaking through the cost limit, but also a strong guarantee of biosecurity of pig farms!
In the past two years, the hog industry has been affected by the African swine fever, the situation of pig farming has changed a lot, one of the cost of pig farming has risen sharply, and in order to ensure the biosecurity of pig farms, a lot of farms began to change the "lead pig" for the "lead sperm".
In the new situation of farming "pig frozen semen" is more and more favored by farmers! However, the industry has never stopped discussing whether fresh or frozen semen is better.
Whether frozen or fresh semen is better?
"Will frozen sperm have less sperm vitality than fresh sperm?"" Is the cost of frozen sperm more expensive?"" How is frozen sperm biosecure?"" Does the thawing technique of frozen sperm have a significant impact on sperm quality?"" "What is the production performance of frozen sperm?"
Thumbing through the major forums and the comments section of the frozen semen-related articles, pig farmers still have a series of questions about frozen semen for pigs! And these questions are really the constraints that once affected the development of swine frozen semen.
In fact, the most obvious advantage of frozen semen is that it can better cross the barriers of time and space to achieve longer preservation and longer distance transportation, so as to achieve the preservation and utilization of high-quality seed sources, but this is also the most basic advantage of frozen semen.
And China's frozen sperm research has made a major breakthrough after more than half a century of development since it began around 1950.
"In terms of biosafety, frozen sperm can completely remove viruses through inactivation reagents, semen separation, ultra-low-temperature freezing and other methods, so that the seven major viruses are all negative, and has been in the virus laboratory of Huazhong Agricultural University to obtain the corresponding experimental results.
In terms of preservation time, frozen sperm can be preserved permanently without the limitation of time and space, while fresh sperm can only be preserved for 5 to 7 days.
Frozen sperm can increase the utilization rate of boars by 4-5 times in terms of breeding selection, thus greatly improving the intensity of boar selection and reducing the amount of boars kept, which is of great help both in terms of the improvement of breeding efficiency and in terms of the promotion of genetic genetic progress.
"Yan Li, chairman of Hubei Chujiunda Biotechnology Co., Ltd, told PigsMuch.com.
Li Zhaohua, a researcher at the Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, once said at an industry conference, "The significance of the research on swine frozen semen lies in the fact that high-quality swine semen will play an important role in promoting the improvement of swine farm breeds, improving production performance, providing a guarantee of biosecurity, and lowering the cost of introducing breeds and feeding management!" It was even pointed out in one sentence that "cryopreservation is only a technology, the genes of boars and their quality are the essence.
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Yan Li also said: "In the end, whether it is better to freeze the sperm or fresh sperm can not be generalized, there are standards to be considered, such as Chujiunda's swine frozen sperm thawed vitality standards must reach more than 70%!"
The essence of "good frozen sperm" is "good swine sperm"
So, a good frozen swine sperm can be produced from the "selection of sperm" to the "selection of sperm". So what are the hurdles that a good "pig frozen sperm" has to go through from the selection of the seed to the fertilization of the sow to ensure the purity of its lineage and genetic purity?
"This is a very strict selection process, selection, panning, production, inspection and use of every detail can not be ignored! As far as 'selection' is concerned, Chu Junda will choose the top 20% of breeding pigs from the national core breeding farms as the source of sperm, which is the basic guarantee for the quality of pig products.
Then in the 'panning' part, the deformity rate of more than 15%, the forward vigor of less than 60% of the breeder semen are eliminated.
The next step is to utilize the frozen semen process and nutritional formulations to give the pre-frozen sperm four energy-boosting treatments at different temperatures for different periods of time, and high-energy sperm is the basis for the formation of strong embryos! In order to guarantee the absolute safety of pig sperms, Chugunda's pig sperms will go through several stages such as incoming test, outgoing test and customer self-test.
Specifically, in order to prevent the seed stock from carrying the non-fever virus, Chugunda's frozen sperm is placed in the warehouse for at least one month to track the safety of the breeding stock before it is released from the warehouse.
(Because the African swine fever virus has an incubation period of up to 21 days).
"Yan Li said.
After layers of screening and processing, the old, weak, sick and disabled sperm are eliminated from the pig sperm, leaving only the "best and brightest"! Under this high standard of screening, the piglets born from Chugunda's "top frozen sperm" are significantly better than those born from "fresh sperm" in terms of birth weight, uniformity, vigor, and the number of healthy piglets!
Is frozen semen more expensive than fresh?
In the downturn of pig prices this year, the farmers are very concerned about the cost control of the collection.
Since all the indicators of Chujunda's frozen semen products perform better than fresh semen, isn't the price much higher than fresh semen as well? And on this point, Yan Li did not deny!
"To be honest, good quality definitely requires more cost investment, so our frozen semen products are more expensive than fresh semen.
But nowadays farmers no longer focus on the amount of input alone, but more on the input-output ratio.
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The essence of pig farming is a "revolution in efficiency", and high-quality seed is a key factor in ensuring leading efficiency.
Yan Li gave us a calculation: "From the output benefit, Chu Junda frozen semen farrowing rate, newborn weight, weaning weight per litter according to today's pig prices, weaning each piglet frozen semen than fresh semen weighs about 0.5 kilograms per litter according to the conservative number of 12 head calculation, more value per litter: 12 head 0.5 kilograms of 15 yuan = 90 yuan; out of the pen: frozen semen pig than fresh semen pig weighs about 5 kilograms per head, more value per litter: 12 head 0.5 kilograms of 15 yuan = 90 yuan. Sperm pigs weigh about 5 kilograms per head, each litter produces value: 12 heads of 5 kilograms 15 yuan = 900 yuan, and can be released ten days earlier.
This output value far exceeds the difference in the purchase price per head of frozen versus fresh semen.
This is the bottom line that product quality brings to us and to the producer!"
Since frozen pig semen is no worse than fresh semen, and even exceeds it, why are so many farmers still skeptical of frozen semen?
"The reason why there is disapproval of frozen semen in the market may be due to a number of different reasons.
For example: 1, when choosing semen, the manufacturers themselves do not make the best guarantee of the quality and vigor of the semen 2, the corresponding thawing technology has not kept up with the same semen thawed by personnel with different levels of skill, the vigor is far from being the same.
3, thawing need to use the diluent is also a key factor in the thawing process, the normal diluent needs to be used within 2 hours after thawing, Chujiunda newly developed long-lasting diluent in the thawing of the temperature at the right time can be saved to 6-8 hours.
4, in the actual breeding operation process, the operation requirements of frozen semen is far more standardized and rigorous than the fresh semen, especially the need to cooperate with the deep insemination technology in order to better reflect the performance of the sperm seed!" Yan Li explained.
One study shows that among all the factors affecting the growth level of pigs, such as management, nutrition, health and genetics, the influence of genes is up to 40%, so it is evident that a small bag of semen, which seems to be very insignificant, is in fact a solution for the improvement of breeds in a pig farm, and its power should not be underestimated.
In the future, the African swine fever epidemic is becoming more and more normalized, swine frozen semen technology can greatly reduce the risk of epidemic disease in pig farms, purify the source of disease in pig farms, and its advantages in biosecurity will make it stand out.
Superimposed on the high quality of the gene itself, swine frozen semen will become a new engine for pig farms to improve quality and efficiency!