Relationships among Puberty, Muscle and Fat, and Liveweight Gain during Mating in Young Female Sheep

Greater depths of muscle are associated with better reproductive performance in ewe lambs, but, in adult ewes, reproductive performance also seems to vary with liveweight gain during the mating period. Therefore, in a large field study with Merino ewe lambs, we tested whether the relationships among...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Reproduction in domestic animals 2015-08, Vol.50 (4), p.637-642
Main Authors: Rosales Nieto, CA, Ferguson, MB, Thompson, H, Briegel, JR, Macleay, CA, Martin, GB, Thompson, AN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adipose Tissue - anatomy & histology
adults
Animal reproduction
Animals
Australia
Body Weight
Breeding
correlation
Diet - veterinary
estrus
Estrus - physiology
ewes
eyes
Female
Fertility - physiology
lambs
liveweight gain
Male
Merino
muscles
Muscles - anatomy & histology
nutrition
Phenotype
Pregnancy
puberty
rams
Reproduction - physiology
reproductive performance
Sexual Maturation - physiology
Sheep
Sheep - physiology
Weight
weight gain
Weight Gain - physiology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Greater depths of muscle are associated with better reproductive performance in ewe lambs, but, in adult ewes, reproductive performance also seems to vary with liveweight gain during the mating period. Therefore, in a large field study with Merino ewe lambs, we tested whether the relationships among eye muscle depth (EMD), fat depth (FAT) and reproductive performance depend on liveweight gain during the mating period. We selected lambs with a wide range in phenotypic values for depths of eye muscle (EMD) and fat (FAT) and assigned them to dietary treatments designed to achieve low (LOW, n = 244) or high (HIGH, n = 237) rates of liveweight gain during a 28‐day mating period. The LOW treatment maintained live weight, whereas the HIGH treatment gained 179 ± 3.8 g/day (p 
ISSN:0936-6768
1439-0531
DOI:10.1111/rda.12542