Abstract

The present study was conducted to study the effect of treatment with human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) on semen characteristics before and after semi-castration of Iraqi male goats, in two experiments. In the first experiment, (10) adult local male goats, aged between 2, 5 and 4 years, were used, divided into two groups, with (5) animals in each group. The animals of the first group were injected with the hormone at a rate of 1500 international units per animal. The injection was done two days before the collection process, and the electrical stimulation method was used for the purpose of collecting the semen. The semen characteristics were evaluated, including volume, group motility, individual motility, percentage of live sperm, percentage of deformed sperm, sperm count, and pH. The control group was injected with physiological saline solution, and collection was done weekly. The experiment lasted for four weeks. The results of the experiment showed that treatment with the hormone led to a significant improvement in semen characteristics compared to the control group, as the values ​​of group motility, individual motility, percentage of live sperm concentration were 95.2 + 0.2, 97.46 + 0.58, 96.52 + 0.75, and 1.97 x 109 respectively, which are higher than all their rates before injection. After the end of the first experiment, the animals were taken and a hemi-castration operation was performed on them, and semen was collected from them 121 days after the operation and for a period of ten weeks to determine the effect of the hemi-castration operation on semen characteristics. Then the animals used in the first experiment were taken and divided into two groups, with 10 animals for each group. The first group was injected with the hormone, and the semen was evaluated after the collection process. It continued for 4 weeks. The results of the second experiment showed that the hormone injection did not affect the semen characteristics except for the volume characteristic, which increased significantly after the injection process and reached 4.06 + 0.5 compared to its value of 3.8 + 0.3 before the injection process.