CATALONIAN DONKEYS' REPRODUCTION AT AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

10:17 AM |

Studying at Veterinary Faculty of Autonomous University of Barcelona I’ve met several professors doing impressing research and teaching students in a completely different and effective way. What makes it so different than my Warsaw faculty is that a hard work and interest of a student is always appreciated and awarded. Not only I was let to learn very important and useful things but I was able to join some research activities at university. Impressed by teaching abilities and great knowledge of Rafael Ruiz de Gopegui I was let to work with him over 2 months doing clinics and research. This resulted in 2 publications of clinical cases that are submitted and will be published soon. I am going to present them together with detail relation of my externship later on.

Now I would like to focus on another great event of my career that I faced. Jordi Miro Roig is one of the best world specialist in equine reproduction. Thanks to his patience, great attitude and teaching skills he let me participate in a great project in reproduction department of UAB. The main aim is to save from extinction a specie of the Catalonian Donkey.

Constantly I was facing the main problem, lack of money. In June I’ve decided to participate in a polish contest for young people ( Stypendium z Wyboru ) where presenting their projects they can get up to 1000 euro scholarship. Among over 600 different project, mine was one of the winners thanks to a lot of people involved in internet voting and judges that found my project one of the most interesting. Soon I could start my work and learn really a lot!

Catalonian Donkey is a symbol of Cataluña, very important and big region of Spain. These animals are much different than other donkeys’ breed, for example their unique character allow them to be kept as pets, they are also very strong what that was the reason in the past to cross them with other breeds making them capable to work harder. For several reasons got into a danger of extinction. Thanks to the great job of Jordi Miro Roig the number of animals is increasing all the time.

Let me tell you a couple of words about my job. Every morning together with professor we went to the farm located at the campus of uni. There were jennies (donkey females) separated from males (jackass). There were 2 females in age of 3 to get pregnant. One 7-year-old with a lactating baby, another 7-months pregnant and another 4-months pregnant. There were also 3 males, one was an effect of insemination with frozen semen done for the first time in the world!

So our job was to follow the estrous cycle, ovarian activity of those that must get pregnant, inseminate them or bring the male if needed when they are in estrous, control the gestations of the pregnant ones and analyze semen of the males.

The farm where they live

This is how every morning they came to say "hello" :)

Here with 6-month-old male

Here my friend Angela and her first day at work

mother with baby

Thanks to Jordi Miro Roig’s research now we know that sexual maturity of jennies appear in about 3 years old, the present continuous cyclic activity but on spring and autumn the maximum receptivity. We also know that the estrous cycle lasts in general 24,9 days, when estrous lasts about about 5.6 days. Ultrasound evaluation of the size of pre-ovulatory follicles helps to predict an ovulation, it is normally produced when follicles are about 44,9 mm. During trans rectal ultrasound examination we always examine also follicles’ texture, tone of uterus, corpus luteum’s activity by Doppler colour and general behavior of a female. What is curious is that females present a high percentage of multiple ovulations, one of our jennies had a triple one!

Here Jordi Miro is giving prostaglandine shot so luteolysis can be induced

We always took them together for eco, they seemed to behave much better when kept in two

Here Jordi Miro explaining to the vet students the physiology of reproduction of donkeys

I was even let to palpate some jennies, this one was about to ovulate

Jordi Miro Roig is one of the pioneers in the world when performing echography of the gestation. I was able to see all the structures of 4-month-old fetus, including skeleton, viscera, recognizing a sex and even evaluating a fetus’ heart activity (everything done trans rectal-impressing!) In Catalonian Donkeys it is possible that double gestation occurs and they can deliver without any complication (we remember that in mare a double gestation always end up with abortion). The gestation of jennies lasts 12 months and 24 days.

Here taking some classes about managing

When jennies entered in estrous we could make them pregnant in different ways. We could bring her to the male and let them copulate, we could bring her and collect a semen from the jackass and inseminate her in different ways- with fresh semen, with refrigerated semen or with frozen. Copulation normally gave excellent results (if jenny was in estrous), as well as with fresh or refrigerated semen. The problem occurred when it came to inseminate with frozen semen. Females presented a strong inflammation in the uterus so neutrophils phagocytized spermatozoa impeding the fecundation. This was one of the aims of Jordi Miro to decrease this inflammatory response. Several research work was done and obtained results were satisfying.

Once we synchronized two jennies and we detected that one of them is possibly in heat we brought her to the male so they could copulate. I will present some pictures and videos.

Here typical signs of a heat, jenny is opening her mouth, ears are extended caudally,

Unfortunately a week later the gestation was not detected as she had hymen preserved. After destroying it she was inseminated and week later diagnosed to be pregnant :)

Another method is to bring a female in heat and collect the semen to inseminate her inmediately.

It's an artificial vagina, here Jordi is preparing it to be used i.e heating up

Semen collection

Preparing the semen doses to be given

Me,injecting semen into uterus

This 7-year-old male is an effect of an artificial insemination with frozen semen performed first time in the world by Jordi Miro.

here to get his "nails" done:)

In lab heating the frozen semen for analysis

Getting ready for analysing the semen samples that are being heated

Spermatozoas' mobility

Taking frozen semen samples

Thank you again everybody who supported me all this time, voted and helped to encourage more people. I want you all to know that I am sooo satisfied with my job and I am looking forward to developing more skills and knowledge in future.

Special thanks to Jordi Miro Roig, one of the most impressive professors I ever met. I was given a great opportunity to work with him and see things I could never be able to experience.

Muchas gracias a todos mis compañeros de UAB cuales participaban con migo en algunas prácticas en las granjas con burros. Gracias a mis queridas amigas que me daban alojamiento durante este periodo y a toda la gente maravillosa de Barcelona que me soportaba y votaba en el concurso, fue un placer trabajar y estudiar en Cataluña!

Dziękuję wszystkim, każdemu z osobna za zaangażowanie w pomoc przy powstaniu projektu, za wszystkich, którzy trzymali kciuki i pomagali na wszystkie sposoby. Reprezentowałam nasz kraj najlepiej jak potrafiłam ale co najważniejsze to nauczyłam się rzeczy jakich w Polsce nie miałabym okazji doświadczyć, raz jeszcze dziękuję!

Dziękuję również wszystkim organizatorom konkursu Stypendium z Wyboru. Zachęcam do korzystania ze zdjęć i filmików przy promowaniu kolejnej edycji.