Relation of Frequency of Collection to Amount of Semen Obtained from Turkey Males

IN A study of seasonal variation of semen production by turkey males Carson et al. (1955, a, b) obtained monthly flock-average semen volumes varying from barely measurable amounts to over 0.3 ml. During the period late February to late May the average volume was 0.24 and 0.27 ml. in two successive years. These figures are low as compared with those previously reported, e.g., by Burrows and Marsden (1938) who obtained 0.1 to 0.7 ml. with averages of 0.3 and 0.4, and by Parker (1946) who reported an average production of 0.33 ml. On the other hand, average estimates of sperm concentration obtained by Carson et al. (1955b) were higher (10.26 and 16.7 billions per ml.) than the 8.4 billions reported by Parker (1946), yielding estimates of numbers of sperm per ejaculate in the same order of magnitude: 2.3 and 4.5 billion from the data of Carson et al. and 2.8 …