The effectiveness of traditional and intrauterine insemination of pigs

Our study aimed to identify the influence of the age of sows using traditional and intrauterine insemination methods in the conditions of industrial pork production technology on their fertility and fecundity, as well as on the efficiency of artificial insemination operators. No difference was found between the animals of the control and experimental groups regarding the average fertility of sows. At the same time, regarding the fertilization coefficient of replacement pigs, the animals of the experimental group significantly (P ≤ 0.05) exceeded the analogs of the control group by 0.88 %. In animals with two or more farrowing, a tendency was observed to decrease fertilization by 0.28 %, and in animals to which sperm was introduced by the post-cervical method. It was found that there was no significant difference between the indicators of the number of piglets born and the multiparity of sows between the groups. At the same time, a tendency towards a slightly higher number of stillborn piglets was found in sows inseminated by the postcervical method. There was also no significant difference between animals inseminated by different methods regarding piglet survival to weaning and their number in the litter during this period. It was found that animals inseminated by intrauterine insemination increased multiparity by 2.9 % after the second farrowing, by 5.6 % after the third farrowing, and by 13.1 % after the fourth. In comparison, after the fifth, such excess decreased to 5.5 %; after the sixth, it was 8.4 %; and after the seventh, it was 10.2 %. Animals inseminated by the traditional method of insemination tended to decrease in multiparity throughout their entire reproductive life. Therefore, after the second farrowing, it decreased by 2.0 %, after the third by 1.2 %, after the fourth by 3.2 %, while after the fifth,h there was an increase compared to the first farrowing by 2.0 %, after the sixth only by 0.8 % and after the seventh there was a decrease by 0.3 %. It was proved that the serial number of the reproductive cycle of sows significantly influenced the total number of piglets at birth by 1.50 %, the multiparity index by 5.51 %, the number of stillborn piglets per farrowing and the number of weaned piglets by 14.47 %. The insemination method factor and its interaction with the farrowing number of farrowing had no significant effect on any of the studied indicators. On average, the process of detecting heat and insemination of sows took 7.5 minutes per sow with traditional insemination, while the post-cervical method, which does not require stimulation of the pig during insemination and allows for the forced introduction of sperm into the uterus, reduces this time by 4.3 minutes, or 57.3 %, and reduces the total time spent on insemination of sows by 62.9 %.