Storage of rooster semen in liquid form using alcoholic extract of rosemary

Current experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of alcoholic extract of rosemary leaves on rooster sperm storage at 4 °C by using eight mature roosters. Semen collection was performed three days’ interval in 5 times. In each session, ejaculates were pooled, split into six parts and the amounts of 0 (R0), 10(R10), 20 (R20), 30 (R30), 40 (R40) and 50 µg/mL (R50) of rosemary extract were added to each part. After that, samples were chilled to 4 ℃ and kept until 72 h. Sperm viability (by staining Hoechst 33258), motility and functional membrane integrity were evaluated at 0 (T0), 24 (T24), 48 (T48) and 72 h (T72). Concentration of malondialdehyde (MDA) was determined to assay lipid peroxidation by one million spermatozoa at 48 h. The results showed that the concentration of MDA was lower in R50 (0.93 nM) than control (1.15 nM), but, it was higher than R40 (0.82 nM, P