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Effect of the freezing medium on the survival of rabbit eggs after deep freezing

The development of frozen–thawed rabbit eggs to near term or term young has been reported by Bank & Maurer (1974), Whittingham & Adams (1976) and Tsunoda & Sugie (1977). The proportions of frozen–thawed eggs surviving in the first two studies were similar (6–7%) and poor compared with that of unfrozen rabbit eggs. In our study (Tsunoda & Sugie, 1977) the proportion of frozen–thawed late morulae developing to term did not differ from that of unfrozen rabbit eggs (64 versus 63%), but the proportion of eggs frozen at the 8–16-cell (early morula) and 2-cell stages was still poor (37 and 13%). Since Whittingham (1971) reported that mouse eggs survived after freezing and thawing when the eggs were suspended in modified Dulbecco's buffered medium (PBS), this medium has been used in most studies, irrespective of species, except those of Utsumi & Yuhara (1975) and Bilton & Moore (1976) who used Ringer or PBS supplemented with rat or goat serum for freezing rat or goat eggs. The importance of serum in the suspending medium for low-temperature preservation of eggs has been pointed out by Hafez (1971). We therefore examined the effects of different freezing media, especially the presence of serum, on the survival of frozen–thawed rabbit eggs.