Semen characteristics of Rhode Island red and white breeder cocks

Abstract

one hundred and three adult cocks or two different strains (Rhode Island White, 59 and Rhode Island Red, 44) were subjected to weekly semen collection for four weeks. The Rhode Island White cocks had a gross sperm motility or 80.76± 1.45% while the value for the Red cocks is 79.43± 1.68% but the difference was insignificant. The Rhode Island White cocks had a higher (P< 0.001) sperm concentration (1.93 0.10xI09/ml) than the Red cocks (1.27±0.12xl09/ml) while semen~ volume (0.58±0.04ml) and colour (1.96±0.14) ror the Rhode Island White cocks were lower (P<0.001) than the corresponding values or 0.80±0.0Sml and  2.82±0.16 for Rhode lsland Red cocks. Colour was round to be positively correlated (r= 0.89) with concentration and total sperm (r=0.61). The correlation  between sperm concentration and volume, and concentration and total sperm, were 0.72 and 0.67 respectively.

KeyWords: Rhode Island Breeder, Cocks, Semen traits.