Sexual behavioural activities of purebred landrace boars under different mating regimens

Abstract

In order to determine the effect of various mating regimens on the expression of sexual behavioural activities of purebred Landrace boars, a study was conducted at Swine Production Farm, LPM Section, IVRI, Izatnagar, India. Six apparently healthy (Age: 8.5±0.5 months) purebred Landrace boars were selected and randomly mated to 18 purebred Landrace gilts following outdoor hand mating system under three different treatment groups, viz., single mating (T1), double mating (T2) and triple mating (T3) during a single oestrus of the gilts. Pre-treatment libido score was similar for all the boars. Data were manually recorded in all the mating sessions (Average duration of 19.50±1.00 minutes) using specialized data coding sheets for the occurrence, frequency and duration of the behavioural activities performed by the boars. Among pre- and post coital behavioural activities, the most frequent behaviour was nosing (2.61±0.16 and 1.65±0.14). On an average, 1.26±0.09 successful mounts were achieved after an average of 3.35±0.32 total mount attempts during the mating sessions. During copulation, a significantly (P<0.05) higher number of mount attempts was observed in T3 as compared to T1 and T2. Average mount duration was 5.17±0.32 minutes and average total duration of intromission was 4.10±0.31 minutes. No significant difference was found among the groups in frequency and duration of pre-coital and post-coital sexual behavioural activities in purebred Landrace boars except in number of mount attempts.