Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine the sexual parameters in young bucks with different sexual activity and the effect of experience (age) on sexual parameters in bucks. Fifteen young, sexually inexperienced (SI) and five adult, sexually experienced (SE) Saanen × Hair goat crossbred bucks were used in this study. Bucks were individually exposed to three estrus does for 15-min periods during four sexual performance tests, which were carried out every other day to determine some sexual behavior traits such as flehmen response, reaction time, and ejaculation efficiency. Sexually inexperienced young bucks were evaluated based on their sexual activity (active (AC) vs inactive (IA)) and presence of horn. It was found that AC bucks had significantly higher serum testosterone concentrations (31.5 vs 21.5 ng/mL) and weight loss (114.2 vs 51.2 g/day) than IA bucks. In addition, weight loss was significantly correlated with ejaculation efficiency in young bucks. On the other hand, horned bucks tended to have higher ejaculation efficiency with significantly longer reaction time than polled bucks. For experience (age) classes, SE bucks had higher testosterone concentration (76.0 vs 31.5 ng/mL) and weight loss (16.7 vs 8.6%) than SI active young bucks. However, the effect of experience on other sexual performance traits was found to be limited. Overall, these results indicate that testosterone concentration may affect sexual performance of young bucks in the mating season. Age-related sexual experience is not a determining factor for sexual performance in bucks. However, sexual performance data alone may not reflect reproductive outcomes without semen data.
Highlights
The sexual behavior of goats is an important factor for flock breeding efficiency and productivity in goat farming
It was determined that young bucks displaying low sexual activity accounted for approximately 50% of all young bucks
first mount (FM) and reaction time (RT) were low in polled bucks, whereas the EE tended to be higher in horned young bucks in the present study
Summary
The sexual behavior of goats is an important factor for flock breeding efficiency and productivity in goat farming. In goat bucks, courting (latency and amount of courting anogenital sniffing, vocalization, nudging, and flehmen) and copulatory (mounting and ejaculation) behaviors are evaluated using a sexual performance test that is part of a serving capacity test (Imwalle and Katz, 2004; Darwish and Mahboub, 2011). Serving capacity and sexual performance tests can be used to predict pasture-mating efficiency in rams (Perkins and Roselli, 2007). These types of test are not common practices for small ruminants and there is less interest and fewer studies associated with sexual performance in goats compared with other livestock species (Flores et al, 2000; Darwish and Mahboub, 2011; Moghaddam et al, 2012)
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