Abstract
The effect of vaginal and cervical deposition of liquid semen stored at room temperature on the fertility of goats was tested in a field trial in which 217 Norwegian Dairy goats aged between 6 months and 7.5 years from 14 farms were inseminated after natural oestrous. Cervical insemination with 200 × 10 6 spermatozoa resulted in 25-day non-return and kidding rates of 87.0 and 78.0%, and vaginal insemination gave 85.5 and 74.3%, respectively. There was no significant difference between the cervical and vaginal inseminations ( P = 0.59 for the 25-day non-return and P = 0.40 for the kidding rates). Farm had a significant effect on the 25-day non-return rate ( P = 0.03) but not on the kidding rate ( P = 0.07). There were no significant differences between the fertility rates for different bucks ( P = 0.36 for the 25-day non-return and P = 0.15 for the kidding rates). Fertility results after vaginal insemination were encouragingly high. Vaginal insemination is a simple, less costly and time consuming technique compared to others, also bringing into focus the animal welfare aspects of the artificial insemination procedure. As the final goal is to establish a technique that could be applied similarly on a large scale by all farmers, vaginal insemination must be considered as a method that would simplify the use of liquid buck semen in Norway.
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