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Fertilization Characteristics Of Spermatozoa Collected From Bulls Grazing Tall Fescue Pastures, Jessica Pegan Harris

Masters Theses

Consumption of toxic endophyte-infected (E+) tall fescue pastures is known to have a negative impact on bull reproductive performance. Since decreased cleavage rates of embryos fertilized with spermatozoa from bulls grazing E+ tall fescue pastures have been observed in several studies using differing sets of bulls, technicians, pastures, and other methods of inducing tall fescue toxicosis (ergotamine tartrate), it is hypothesized that spermatozoa function from bulls grazing E+ is impaired in ways undetectable by gross semen examination.

During a three-month grazing study, 6 Angus bulls were utilized to determine the effects of grazing E+ tall fescue pastures on growth performance …