When you select your male you want to be very sure
before you sacrifice him that it is, in fact, a male. Hold him in your hands the
same way you do a female. Turn him over so his stomach is facing up. With your
free hand stroke his forearm away from his body. There should be a black sticky
patch there.
Prepare a concentrated stock solution by adding 10 gm
Benzocaine to 100 ml ethanol. For euthanasia add 15 ml of the stock solution to one
liter water. After at least 10 minutes submerged in the solution, the male is ready
for the surgery. Check for depth of anesthesia by a loss of righting response and
loss of response to painful stimuli. Wearing gloves, remove him and place him
belly up on a paper towel. Using forceps, grab the skin and snip with a
pair of scissors. Once you have nicked the skin, make a shallow incision up the length of his
body. Fold away the skin and repeat this with his muscle layer.
Be sure to stay very shallow when cutting through the body wall. If you go too deep,
you will nick the liver and he will bleed all over. Fold back the muscle layers.
Cut through his rib cage. Holding the heart in a pair of forceps, snip it
out. This will cause a lot of blood to enter into the body cavity, but it insures
that he will not wake up during the surgery.
Starting on one side of the body, pull out the yellow
fat bodies. Gently probe around until you have located the testis. It
will look like a small white bean in amongst the yellow fat body. Place the testis
in a 1xMMR plus 10mg/ml gentamycin solution on ice.
Repeat this with the other side of the body.
Wrap the body and place in the freezer until you can
properly dispose of it.
To boost your sperm count or if you are doing a sperm prep
you will want to prime
the male.
