Stud Dog Management with Dr. Hutchison, DVM
Dr. Hutchison talks about stud dog management, including semen production, timing and frequency of covers, and common reasons for infertility.
In this webinar, Dr. Hutchison, DVM speaks with Laura Reeves, host of Pure Dog Talk and The Good Dog Pod, about stud dog management, including semen production, timing and frequency of covers, and common reasons for infertility.
Transcript
Laura Reeves Welcome, everyone! I am Laura Reeves, host of the Good Dog Pod. And we, at Good Dog, are so excited to have you guys join us for this live webinar and Good Dog Pod recording with Dr. Hutchison. I will be helping moderate the flow here. Dr. Judi Stella is here to help us catch any questions. Dr. Hutchison, we are thrilled to have you here. Without further ado, I would like to mention anybody who is not yet a member of our community, please—I’m reading my paper so I get this right, you guys—please visit www.gooddog.com/join-as-breeder to learn more and also check out some of other articles and webinars at www.gooddog.com/good-breeder-center. Without any more hesitation, Dr. Hutchison, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Hutchison It’s a pleasure. I can’t think of a better way to spend a fall afternoon than talking about canine reproduction.
Laura Reeves I agree.
Dr. Hutchison Things have just changed so much since I’ve been doing this. It’s always exciting to get out and talk to people and answer the questions and hopefully lead to success with the number of puppies they whelp, with the number of bitches they get bred—and also maybe understand some of what’s going on in their stud dogs. There’s very common questions that we get on stud dogs; many people don’t understand how the procedure actually works in the male.
Laura Reeves I think that that’s great. We’re going to spend the first half hour of our discussion here today talking about stud dogs, exactly. Can you talk about semen production? Breeders often want to know if there’s a recommended length of time between collections, how long it takes to produce and replace semen, and how frequently a dog can be collected. Let’s start there, shall we?
Dr. Hutchison It actually takes a dog 54.5 days to make sperm. When you collect a dog today, and then you collect him tomorrow, you don’t get fresh semen that he made last night. You think about a male dog—works more like a checkbook. Let’s say an Irish Setter has a sperm reserve of probably 4 billion sperm. So when you collect a male dog, and he ejaculates, he’s going to ejaculate (an Irish Setter) roughly around 700-750 million sperm. So just simple math tells you, you can collect that dog 6 days in a row, if you would need to. The trouble is: if you get greedy and over-collect a male dog and drain it (just like draining your checking account), it takes a while to build it back up again. Understanding sperm (sperm production) probably is one of the most important things in having a male dog. A question I always start some of my seminars with is: does a Chihuahua have the same sperm count as a Rottweiler? And the answer is: no, they don’t. The testicles are factories. The testicles are factories in that 80% of a dog’s sperm count is nothing more than the size of the testicle. So a big dog has big testicles, big sperm count; a little dog has little testicles and little sperm count. But it is taken into account, when the dog ejaculates, how much he puts out. So ejaculation, as we said in Irish Setter, puts out probably 750 million sperm. A Chihuahua may put out only 50 million sperm. An Irish Wolfhound with good functioning testicles may put out 2 billion sperm. First of all, let’s talk about what is a normal sperm count for your dog. Some of you are my friends out there. It’s good to hear from you again. Other ones, I’ve never met. I know what your dog’s sperm count is, if he’s healthy. Because a normal sperm count should be 10 million sperm per pound of body weight. So, as we say, an Irish Setter male—70-75 pounds—700-750 million sperm. An important thing, though, to know is that he doesn’t need that many to settle a bitch. Probably an Irish Setter-size dog needs (in some of the studies) maybe 125-150 million live normal sperm for conception to occur.
So as we talk about what a normal sperm count is, it’s a big difference between: is my dog reproductively normal, or is he fertile? Many times, I’ll get that, where we’ll talk to someone about, “Do we need to do a sperm count?” and they say, “We don’t need to do a sperm count because he just sired a litter last week.” Well, just again, mathematics from that Irish Setter we’re talking about—he could be shut down 70% and still be siring litters. Besides the number of sperm, you also have normal sperm. Abnormal sperm does not cause abnormal puppies. Abnormal sperm causes no puppies. Again, that’s another part of the sperm count—you have to look. What percentage of ejaculate is normal sperm? You could have a billion sperm, but if they’re all abnormal, you basically have none. So a sperm count is not just how many sperm, but what percent of those are normal? We have to have motility in a normal sperm count, because in fact, the sperm has to swim up to the ovary. Conception occurs up in the oviducts or Fallopian tubes. It doesn’t occur down in the uterus. So the sperm has to be able to swim. But don’t fall in the trap of looking under your microscope and saying, “Oh, they’re all swimming, therefore it must be good.” I have dogs who have 90% swimming sperm that couldn’t settle a bitch if their life depended on it.
So part of it is how often can we use our male? How frequently do we need to? Depends on what’re we starting out with. If you’re starting out with 4 billion sperm, you’ve got 750 million in an ejaculate, you’ve got 85% normal, you’ve got motility in 90%—then that dog’s a healthy dog, probably can be collected 6-7 days in a row. Another thing people don’t realize is fresh semen in the bitch lasts 4, 5, 6 days. There’s a study out of Colorado State where they found live semen 11 days after they put it in the bitch. So if you’re one of those (“I have to breed her every day!”), you probably don’t need to breed her every day. You probably need to breed her every 3-4 days; therefore, you’re also conserving sperm, too. As we said, getting back to the original question: even if we have a normal sperm count, a normal dog can be collected 6-7 days in a row without running out of sperm. A normal dog can probably be collected every other day his whole life without running out of sperm. Occasionally, we’ll have a dog where we have to collect him twice in one day. Say we’re freezing the semen. And that doesn’t hurt them either. But just think about your checking account, though: if you start writing too many checks, pretty soon the account’s empty. Same as your dog’s sperm count.
Where we’re seeing problems now is not the average breeder as a lot of us are, you breed a number of bitches, but your males get days off. But there’s certain popular stud dogs that are sending chilled semen every day. Many times you have demands for the dogs where you’re having two or three people wanting to breed their same bitch on the same day. So you’re starting to collect the dog and cut the semen into two or three breedings when you send it. Well, these are the dogs that—after a few days—the semen starts to look less creamy, more like water; you start to see more and more immature sperm coming out. Immature sperm are put out by the body, trying to keep the numbers up, but they don’t chill. They don’t freeze. They don’t cause puppies. These are all things that we need to take into account. There is an art in taking care of a stud dog and managing it properly. Many times, understanding how long the sperm is going to live and also that the dog does occasionally need a break to keep things going. He is turning the sperm over in his urine every day. He is therefore supplying new sperm every day, but the total to replace the sperm count does take almost two months. Those are the things that we need to be conscious of. But we need to know: What’s my dog’s sperm count? What percent are normal? What percent are motile? Then you and I can monitor how healthy is my dog? If your dog’s a valuable stud dog, there’s demand for him. Having a sperm count done at least twice a year is probably a good thing to do. Most dogs are pretty willing donors for a sperm count. You don’t have to even hit a vein for a sample. So these dogs are pretty happy. Just by saying “Oh, he is siring litters, therefore I know he is reproductively normal” is fooling only yourself.
Laura Reeves Okay. These are great bits of information. You covered our second question a little bit, so I have a follow-up of my own and I want to get to the second question. We hear veterinarians tell us over time, you need to do a clean-out collection, right? To get rid of all the dead and twisted. So that’s one piece. And then following that up, we talked about the 125-150 million live normal to settle a bitch—do we see differences (and can you explain to listeners the differences) between live, fresh-chilled, and frozen in terms of those counts?
Dr. Hutchison Absolutely. First of all, if you don’t breed a male dog, there doesn’t come a time when you hear a big explosion and there’s sperm all over your ceiling. They’re constantly churning it over. The statement that these dogs need to be cleaned out—and I have a few people I’ve met in my life who I think their hobby is collecting their dog—it really isn’t an essential thing. He’s doing it himself, turning it over. People say, “Well, he’s going to come to get his semen frozen. We’re going to collect him a couple of times to get rid of the old sperm.” He’s already doing that for us. So I’ve never met a dog who didn’t settle a bitch because he hadn’t been cleaned out. A male’s first ejaculate is not that less healthier than a second ejaculate. That probably is a little bit of a fallacy. The sperm numbers—to get back to that a little bit, too—basically, genetically pre-programmed. And that’s why I can say most dogs’ counts are 10 million per pound of body weight. So it’s just like if you go and draw blood from 10 dogs. Most of the blood counts are going to be about the same, even though they may be different breeds, because it is genetically pre-programmed. It is the same in male dogs for their sperm count. The genetics are what is behind the dog having the 10 million per pound of body weight. Genetics are what are behind the percent normals in that. Just like in the bloodstream, if you have a bleeding ulcer (for example) and you’re losing blood, eventually the body starts putting out immature cells, trying to keep that number up for the blood count. The concentration of cells in the blood’s around 43%, so the body is working hard to keep it up to that level. It’s just the same in sperm counts in dogs. If we start to overuse the male dog, if it starts to have problems, the body starts releasing the sperm cells before they are mature. So, oftentimes, these are swimming around, but they’re not capable of being used. The way I always think of a sperm is a battery. It has a certain amount of energy. If we take it right from the stud dog, put it right into the bitch, it’s probably going to last (easily) 5-6 days or longer. But then let’s say we do something a little more challenging to our battery. We package it, we pack ice packs around it, we cool it down to 40 degrees, and we give it to the FedEx man to send to you in Oregon. Well, what happens: that sperm doesn’t just say, “Okay, I’m just going to stay here and save my energy.” The sperm is constantly using up the energy at the 40 degrees, so it gets to the other end. Even if it was a great count out of that Irish Setter—750 million sperm, 85% normal—it still is only going to last 2-3 days when we get it to Oregon.
Let’s take frozen semen. Frozen semen is stored at -322 degrees Fahrenheit (-180 degrees Celsius). It’s stored in liquid nitrogen. So if you stuck your finger in liquid nitrogen for ten seconds, your finger would just fall off. So it takes a lot of energy for that sperm to go down to -322 degrees, to stay there in almost suspended animation (but they’re using a little bit of energy in the tanks). And then when we thaw it, we thaw it instantaneously—almost back up to body temperature. It goes up over 400 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of 1-2 seconds. The sperm is so happy to be warm again. It’s swimming all over. But it’s used a tremendous amount of energy being frozen and thawed. So frozen semen will last only about 6-12 hours in the body. That is why, when you say to me, “I have my choice. What type of sperm should I use? Should I use fresh, chilled, or frozen?” the answer is always: of equal quality, you take the semen that is going to live the longest. So if you say, “Well, I can get a side-by-side or I can have the semen chilled,” then you always take the semen that’s going to live the longest. Where the fallacy comes in that—if you said to me, “I can breed to a live dog who’s 14 years old, but I can get his frozen semen from when he was 2 years of age,” I say quality comes in. Of equal quality, you always take the semen that’s going to live the longest. It takes that pressure off of you. Because one of the big reasons bitches miss (remember, from when we talked) is semen. So if you’re looking at semen quality and the timing of the bitch, the longer the sperm lives, the less worry you have about having live semen there or live sperm there when the egg is ready to be fertilized. With frozen semen—that’s why it’s so absolutely challenging—the sperm is only going to live 6-12 hours. It’s not going to make up for our breeding mistakes by length of life, so that is why there’s so much more of a challenge with the frozen semen. Once again, it is just exciting. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years, and it is still so amazing to have a litter of Boxers recently from semen that had been stored 20 years (20 years!). The puppies are fabulous puppies. Big litter, gorgeous puppies. But the father’s been dead 12 years. Just amazing stuff.
Laura Reeves It is amazing. My mother had the very first litter of frozen semen Clumber puppies, so I think it is fascinating.
Dr. Hutchison That’s always been the fun of it! When I started doing this, there had only been 12 frozen semen litters. People would come to me, and they’d say, “You know that’s real exciting, but it won’t work in my breed.” And I’m thinking: I hate to say this. I don’t want to offend anybody. But inside, but most dogs look alike. Inside they look alike! That’s been the fun. We had the first frozen semen litter of Dobermanns. Great, but it didn’t work in toy dogs. We had the first frozen semen litter of Yorkies. I mean, just all of that makes it so much fun. Getting to do stuff and prove to people that you can do what you want. You just have to be willing to do it.
Laura Reeves Absolutely. So, moving on to our next topic. Do we have tips or best practices for breeders that are thinking about doing the collection themselves on their dogs?
Dr. Hutchison A couple of things.
Laura Reeves I could tell you my stories, but I’m not going to.
Dr. Hutchison Well, I’ll tell you some of my stories. And some of you have heard the same story, but my students and interns—they come in, they’re overwhelmed. They’re here with us, they’re talking to breeders. I say, “Go ahead and collect a dog.” Think about how a natural breeding works. The dog does have pelvic thrusting. The male guides the os penis into the bitch, and then once it’s in, the bulbs engorge and the tie is there. He’s not pelvic thrusting anymore. The students—they’re pumping their hands 150 miles an hour. They end up with blisters on their palms, trying to collect these dogs. Really, collecting a dog at home, three things are important.
One is that you’re going to collect it into something that’s not damaging to the sperm. So if you’re at home, baggies, baby bottle liners are good things to collect into. I myself have never been a big styrofoam cup guy. I never could answer why that styrofoam dust that floats to the top is beneficial to a bitch. Second of all: you want to be sure you’re getting a total ejaculate from your dog. So it is best if you have a bitch in season, something like that. Even if you don’t always have bitches in season, sometimes doing vaginal smear swabs and freezing them, then when it comes to collect the male, let them thaw, wipe them on the back of a bitch that’s not in season. That will, many times, give the pheromones, the odors that trigger him to do it. Third is you want to mimic a natural breeding as much as you can. You stimulate the male a little bit. Try to get the sheath behind the bulbs. The bulbs are those baseballs that swell up to cause the tie. It is the male that causes the tie. It’s not the bitch holding him in. And you grab behind the bulbs and you hold the bulbs in your hand—just like a baseball. You’re holding it just like a baseball. That’s putting the same pressure the male is used to, the feeling of being in the bitch. And then you can feel the pulsations, and then you hold on. You’re not stimulating. You’re not pumping the semen out. You’re just mimicking what he would normally be feeling.
Now, the male ejaculates in three separate parts. The first part is just some prostatic fluid. If you miss the first squirt or two, you haven’t lost the Best In Show sperm or something. You’re just getting the prostatic fluid. Sometimes that’s good because you’d be flushing any urine in there. Urine is damaging to sperm. Blood is not, urine is. Second of all: you see it starting to turn to creamy white, as you should. That’s the sperm fraction. That’s the part you want to collect all of. How do you know when you’re done collecting? By the bottle is filled? Is it that your hand is sore and your fingers cramp? No. You stop collecting when you see the prostatic fluid. The third part is prostatic fluid again. It looks just like water. So when you see it starting to turn to water again, running down inside your baggie or baby bottle liner, your collection sheath you have—that’s when you know when to quit. There’s no more sperm coming, so that’s when you’re done collecting. Then the male, of course, you want to go ahead and make sure he gets the bulbs as they come down. You want to make sure the penis gets back into the sheath so it’s not uncomfortable to him. Again, that’s how you do it. The older the dog, the bigger his prostate is. So you’re going to get more of that first fraction. A young dog—you may get two drops of that fraction, and then you get the creamy sperm fraction right away. If you’re collecting an old Great Dane, you may actually get 15-20 mls of first fraction before the second part. That’s why you’re doing it visually. You’re not doing a clock. You’re not doing it by the volume. You’re doing it visually.
Now, what if you collected, collected, collected, and it looks still like water? This is where you start being concerned about males because you can have problems in males, even though it’s genetically programmed to a normal male, normal sperm count, we see dogs that have no sperm at all. No sperm, there’s only five reasons. Did you get the total ejaculate? It’s interesting, collecting a male dog—there’s actually two nervous systems involved in the collection of a male dog. The first (the parasympathetic nervous system) causes the erection. So many times, you can be there stimulating a male, blowing in his ear, rubbing his thigh—whatever—and you’ll get the erection, but then you have to have a total different nervous system (the sympathetic nervous system) that causes the ejaculation. So sometimes, people call me out of panic: “I just collected my dog. There’s no sperm.” Well, how much did you get? “I got two drops. There’s no sperm!” Well, you collected him (or your veterinarian did it), but the dog’s in there, you don’t have a bitch in season, he’s nervous, he thinks he’s getting a rabies shot, and you’re wanting him to give an ejaculate. So sometimes you have to step back and say, “Is the environment my dog is in conducive to giving a good ejaculation?”
Then we look at (if you don’t have any sperm): did you get a total ejaculate? Did he shoot it into his bladder? All you do is you collect the urine after he’s collected. Some of these dogs are retrograde; they shoot the sperm into their bladder. You’ll see more sperm in the bladder, none in your tube. That’s easy to do. We use the same medications to tighten bladder as we do for bitches that leak urine.
Three: there are some blockages. You have to be somewhat protective of a dog’s testicles. The body forms sperm, but the body recognizes sperm cells as being foreign proteins. So if you have trauma to the testicles—some of the old-time field trainers used to reprimand them with a good, swift kick to the wrong places—but any time you start doing something that’s going to mix blood and sperm, then the body can start to form what’s called granulation tissue that make almost like a plug vasectomy. That is a serious concern, if you have a dog that had his testicles traumatized. Because these plug vasectomies are almost impossible to cure.
The fourth: if the dog made no sperm, are the testicles working? The number one cause of that is not lack of supplements or something. It’s genetics. I see a lot of dogs with the immune system also that removes the sperm from the system, even though the testicles are working. So that’s how you start to think about it, even with a dog with a problem. What are the issues? If he has no sperm, he doesn’t have an infection. He’s not on antibiotics for 90 days. If he has no sperm, those are the only five causes.
In my practice, my technicians (who are phenomenal) look at different problems in a totally different way. A dog with no sperm is different than a dog who has a low sperm count of normal sperm. That dog—you’re looking to see if he’s stressed, if he’s on steroids, feeding back the pituitary. The third is if you have sperm but they’re all abnormal (coiled tails, detached heads), these are the ones where you’re thinking: maybe I do have a prostate infection, maybe I do have an immune system situation, maybe I do have some other type of traumatic incident going on, maybe it’s genetic. So when you have a problem in a male dog—and a common question I get (I’m sure it’s on your list): what supplements do I need to give a male dog? The answer is: there is nothing. If a male dog is working normally, he doesn’t need things. In all honesty, if I had to market a supplement they’re going to call Big Stud Makes Female Puppies, I’d probably be doing this from my own tropical island somewhere.
Laura Reeves Yes, you would.
Dr. Hutchison Vitamin supplements people buy—they all have cutesy names like that. But a normal, working stud dog doesn’t need supplements. He’s a normal, working stud dog. Now, if he’s having a problem, then you need a diagnosis. Just as I said, we use three totally different work-ups. There’s not one treatment that suddenly is going to correct all the problems. A good working stud dog—you want to keep him lean. Being overweight does have an effect on the testicles. The testicles hang outside the body because they need to be kept cool. You get some of these overweight dogs, you’re starting to get fat packing around there, you’re having problems. You have to be careful in the heat of summer. The blacktop, when it’s 90 degrees outside. You have to be careful if you’re in Minnesota, frostbite in the winter, or other places that have heavy snow and cold temperatures. You have to be careful. Do your periodic sperm count, so you know if something’s taking place, what’s going on—early. Because I’ll tell you: it’s a lot easier to correct something when it’s beginning than after it’s been going on for two years, and you suddenly miss three bitches.
Laura Reeves Excellent. Alright, well, thank you, Hutch. That was amazing. Talk about stud dogs, and we covered all of our topics. You are prescient. You knew what I was going to ask, even before I asked it.
Dr. Hutchison That’s the prescient part of the program, where I read your mind.
Laura Reeves I love it!
