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Paternity Efficiency In Turkeys Differes Extensively After Hererospermic Insemination, Ann M. Donoghue, Murray R. Bakst, Paul Drummond, Shakura Haqque, Edward J. Smith, Daniel J. Donoghue

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

All commercial turkey hens in the U.S. are bred by artificial insemination (AI). Since semen samples are pooled from 10 or more males (heterospermic inseminations), paternity of the progeny is rarely known. Whereas it is known that sperm competition exists, the degree to which any male's sperm fertilizes ova relative to other male's remains unknown. In this work, we determined individual male fecundity relative to that of other males in the study and attempted to establish a relationship between male fecundity and semen characteristics in turkeys. Fingerprinting of genomic DNA from parents and offspring was used to determine parentage efficiency. …