The reproductive performance of sows was evaluated aiming at the comparison of two insemination techniques. In a completely randomized design, 608 females of 2-4 parities were inseminated in two treatments: intrauterine with 1.5x10(9) spermatozoa/60 mL or traditional insemination with 3x10(9) spermatozoa/90 mL. It was possible to insert the intrauterine catheter in 97.4% of females and bleeding was observed in 9.5%, which had a higher probability to repeat estrus (p<0.05). The percentage of semen backflow volume, during two hours after insemination, was significantly higher (p<0.05) in intrauterine insemination than traditional, whereas sperm backflow percentage was similar. The sperm backflow percentage did not influence the farrowing rate and the litter size. There was no difference in the return to estrus rate (3.6%; 4.3%), pregnancy rate at 21 days post-insemination (99.5%; 97.2%), adjusted farrowing rate (94.9%; 94.3%) and average litter size (11.6; 11.8 piglets) between treatments, respectively. The intrauterine insemination ensures a reproductive performance similar to traditional, but with a lower sperm number.
sperm number; farrowing; semen backflow; reproduction; litter size; pregnancy rate
