Effects of Magnetic Field Intensities for Various Lengths of Time on Orientation of Fowl Spermatozoa

This study used fowl sperm from three White Leghom rooster reared at our laboratory. Semen samples were exposed to the magnetic field strengths of from 650 to 5700 Gauss for one. two, or three days to investigate the influence of magnetic field on the orientation of fowl spermatozoa. Fowl spermatozoa were found to orient with their long axis of heads perpendicular to the magnetic field direction. The fowl spermatozoa were initially influenced when magnetic field intensities were from 650 to 5700 Gauss and the highest values (70.67, 72.49 and 71.79%) were found in the 5700 Gauss treatment at one, two, and three days exposure, respectively. Although percentages of the perpendicular oriented fowl spermatozoa increased along with the enhancement of the magnetic field intensity, the degree of orientation was only significantly higher in the treatments having the magnetic field strength from 1500 to 5700 Gauss than that in the control treatment at all exposure time. In addition, the experimental results also showed that the percentages of all orientational types of fowl spermatozoa (perpendicular category including upward perpendicular and downward perpendicular and parallel type consisting of leftward parallel and rightward parallel) in all treatments tended to be stable during exposure time. From the results of this study. it is suggested that (1) the diamagnetic anisotropy of the inside structural components of fowl spermatozoa induce them to orient perpendicular to the magnetic field direction, (2) the degree of orientation increased according to the enhancement of magnetic field strengths, (3) fowl spermatozoa had not an high sensitivity to the magnetic field, and the level of perpendicular orientation of fowl spermatozoa in this study is nearly similar to that of cattle sperm in the study of Suga et al. (2000).