1. The average sperm count
for a dog is 10 million sperm per pound of
body weight - in other
words a 10 pound dog should have 100 million sperm in
1 ejaculate, a 100 pound
dog should have a billion. More is OK, less is a
problem.
2. Different semen
freezing companies have different sperm counts in a
breeding
unit.
3. We expect dogs with 80%
or more normal sperm before freezing to be
fertile. I have seen dogs
with lots of abnormal sperm still be able to
settle a bitch but they
don't freeze worth a darn. If they can be
successfully treated for
their pathology many do freeze better later
4. Older dogs don't freeze
or ship all that well. Unlike fine wine and
fine women, sperm does NOT
improve with age
5. Pellets usually have a
higher % of live sperm after a freeze than
straws do.
6. There are 2 reasons not
to breed a maiden bitch with frozen semen -
1 is if she fails, you
don't' know if she had an abnormality that interfered
with pregnancy and 2 is
you don't know what her mothering skills are like.
The best time to get high
conception rates is when a bitch is young, so we
recommend using a young
bitch for frozen semen as your litter sizes should
be better.
7. More live puppies
statistically will be born by c-section than
vaginal births, by about
10 %. This is especially true in very large and
very small
litters.
8. You will get higher
conception rates and bigger litters with
surgical inseminations
than you will with any other technique including
natural service and
Transcervical inseminations. Admittedly, some owners
are
reluctant to have
c-sections and surgical AIs done as they are more
invasive.
9. At the labs that many
of the repro vets use, specifically Marshfield
and a few others,
ovulation is stated to occur at 5 with recommended
breedings to occur 48 to
72 hours after ovulation. PLEASE don't leave skid
marks on the driveway at
the vet clinic when they tell you to get in the car
for a 2 day drive when
your bitch's progesterone hits 2.5. And PLEASE do
quantitative progesterone
levels, not the dot or well tests when you are
using fresh chilled or
frozen semen! Have your vet send the blood to a lab
that gives you a number,
not a color change - like kinda blue or kinda pink.
That is just not accurate
enough.
10. Ask for a sperm count
if you are having fertility issues with your
boys.
11. Be sure that if you
are shipping semen to another vet clinic, that
you SEE the tube with your
dog's name, breed, your name, etc written on it.
The clinics like ours that
do a lot of repro work will often get 3 or 4
incoming shipments of
semen a day and we really don't want to mix up a batch
of oops puppies,. Twice in
one day! And remember to get the tracing number
from UPS or FedEx so the
package can be tracked on Saturday afternoon AFTER
the vet clinic who shipped
the semen out is closed.
12. insist that you
see the FedEx form (if you don't fill it out
yourself) to ensure that
it is properly addressed. The wrong zip code
can
tie a shipment up
for anywhere from 4 - 24 hours (or more). We also
insure
every semen shipment
package for at least the value of the stud fee +
expenses
(progesterone, AI,
etc), as FedEx will reimburse you only $50 if they
mess
up.
