Heterosis for Ewe Lamb Productivity

1976 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 819-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Hohenboken ◽  
Phillip E. Cochran
Keyword(s):  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1998 ◽  
pp. 105-105
Author(s):  
C. M. Dwyer ◽  
A. B. Lawrence

Perinatal lamb mortality remains a major economic and welfare concern in sheep farming with 80-90% of pre-weaning lamb losses occur in the immediate postnatal period (Haughey, 1993). One of the predominant factors in the death of neonatal lambs is failure of ewe-lamb bonding leading to delay or lack of sucking. Successful sucking requires the co-ordinated expression of appropriate behaviour from both the ewe and lamb. Previously we have demonstrated an interaction between ewe and lamb breed in the rate of successful sucking (Dwyer et al., 1996) with Blackface lambs having a higher rate than Suffolk lambs but also a higher rate with Suffolk ewes than with Blackface ewes. In the present study we investigated the role of ewe responses to lamb sucking attempts in determining the sucking success of neonatal lambs.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aline Freitas de Melo ◽  
Raquel Pérez-Clariget ◽  
Angélica Terrazas ◽  
Rodolfo Ungerfeld

Abstract The aims were to compare ewe-lamb behaviours between primiparous (PRI) and multiparous (MUL) undernourished grazing ewes at birth and at 3 months of age, and to determine if mothers’ parity affects milk yield and composition, and lambs’ body weight (BW). Food availability restricted the nutritional requirements from day 30 to day 143 of gestation. The PRI ewes had lower BW than MUL during gestation, and their lambs tended to vocalize less times until their first suckle. PRI ewes displayed a lower frequency of acceptance behaviours toward the alien lamb than toward their own lamb, but MUL did not. Whilst PRI ewes emitted a greater number of high-pitched bleats toward the alien lambs than toward their own lamb, MUL did not. PRI ewes produced less milk than the MUL ewes. The heart rate was greater in lambs reared by MUL ewes than by PRI. Although PRI ewes had a lower BW throughout the gestation, this difference was stable and did not affect the establishment of the ewe-lamb bond at birth or at 3 months postpartum. At least under nutritionally restricted conditions during gestation, inexperienced mothers appeared to have a shorter sensitivity period of maternal responsiveness than experienced mothers.


Author(s):  
Ophélie Menant ◽  
Rodolfo Ungerfeld ◽  
Frédéric Levy ◽  
Raquel Pérez-Clariget ◽  
Aline Freitas-de-Melo
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Robert Wyatt ◽  
John Andrew Johnson
Keyword(s):  

1966 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Vesely ◽  
H. F. Peters ◽  
S. B. Slen

Rambouillet, Romnelet, Columbia, Targhee, and Suffolk sheep were evaluated under range conditions for the production of lamb and wool in the period 1960–1963. The production traits analyzed were: birth and weaning weight; face cover and neck wrinkling; fertility, prolificacy, weaned lamb production, and body weight of ewe; lamb survival to weaning; grease and clean fleece weight, staple length, wool grade, and percentage yield of clean wool by yearling and mature ewes.Lambs of Romnelet were lighter at birth than those of the other breeds. Targhee and Suffolk were the heaviest at birth. Romnelet and Columbia lambs were lighter at weaning than those of Rambouillet, Targhee, and Suffolk.Fertility, prolificacy, and weaned lamb production were essentially the same in the four range breeds. Suffolk produced more weaned lamb than the other four breeds. There were no breed differences in the survival of lambs.Columbia exceeded all other breeds in production of grease and clean fleece weight. Suffolk produced the smallest amount of wool. Staple length of Columbia ewes was 4.3, 7.5, 18.6, 23.7 mm longer than that of Romnelet, Targhee, Suffolk, and Rambouillet ewes.


Numen ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiano Grottanelli

AbstractMircea Eliade, the writer and historian of religions, and Ernst Jünger, the hero of the Great War, novelist, and essayist, met in the 1950s and co-edited twelve issues of the periodical Antaios. Before they met and cooperated, however, and while the German writer knew about Eliade from their common friend, Carl Schmitt, they both dealt with the subject of human sacrifice. Eliade began to do so in the thirties, and his interest in that theme was at least in part an aspect of his political activism on behalf of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Iron Guard, the nationalistic and anti-Semitic movement lead by Corneliu Codreanu. Sacrificial ideology was a central aspect of the Legion's political theories, as well as of the practice of its members. After the Iron Guard was outlawed by its allies, and many of its members had been killed, and while the Romanian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu was still fighting alongside the National Socialist regime in the Second World War, Eliade turned to other aspects of sacrificial ideology. In 1939 he wrote the play Iphigenia, celebrating Agamemnon's daughter as a willing victim whose death made the Greek conquest of Troy possible; and as a member of the regime's diplomatic service in Lisbon he published a book in Portuguese on Romanian virtues (1943), in which he presented what he called Two Myths of Romanian Spirituality, extolling his nation's readiness to die through the description of the sacrificial traditions of Master Manole and of the Ewe Lamb (Mioritza). Jünger's attitude to sacrifice ran along lines that were less traditional: possibly already while serving as a Wehrmacht officer, in his pamphlet Der Friede, the German writer attributed sacrificial status to all the victims of the Second World War, soldiers, workmen, and unknowing innocents, and saw their death as the ransom of a peace "without victory or defeat." In this article, the sacrificial ideologies of the two intellectuals are compared in order to reflect upon the complex interplay between traditional religious themes, more or less freely re-interpreted and transformed, political power, and violent conflict, in an age of warfare marked by fascisms and by the terrible massacre some refer to by the name of an ancient Greek sacrificial practice.


1996 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Ap Dewi ◽  
J. B. Owen ◽  
A. El-Sheikh ◽  
R. F. E. Axford ◽  
M. Beigi-Nassiri

AbstractOvulation rate (OR) and litter size (LS) were recorded in a flock of Cambridge sheep from 1984 to 1994 and from 1976 to 1994 respectively. There were 1516 and 2480 OR and LS records with means of 3·2 and 2·5 respectively. There was considerable variation in results between years ranging from 2·2 to 3·2 for LS and from 2·8 to 4·2 for OR. Ewe lamb OR was affected by year of recording, some years having higher OR than others. Rearing type (single, twin or triplet) also affected ewe lamb OR, twins having lower OR than both singles and triplets. Ewe lamb OR decreased with later date of birth reflecting a lower age at OR counting. Ewe lamb LS was affected by year of recording and there was also an interaction between date of birth and year indicating that OR decreased with later date of birth in some years but not in others. OR of adult ewes was affected by year of recording which also interacted with age (2, 3 and 4). Generally, OR increased with age but this trend was not observed in all years. LS of adult ewes was significantly affected by year and increased with ewe age (2, 3 and 4). Heritability and repeatability were determined for ewe lamb OR and LS and adult ewe OR and LS in univariate and two-trait analyses using DFREML. Heritabilities of ewe lamb OR (0·18 to 0·21) and LS (0·05 to 0·08) were lower than corresponding adult ewe values for OR (0·19 to 0·34) and LS (0·19 to 0·22). Ewe OR had a lower repeatability (0·43 to 0·55) than LS (0·30 to 0·80). High genetic correlations (>0·9) were obtained for combinations of ewe lamb OR, ewe lamb LS, adult ewe OR and adult ewe LS. The importance of analysing ewe lamb and ewe records separately is discussed as is the value of ewe lamb OR as a selection criterion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (7) ◽  
pp. 1297 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Mora-Medina ◽  
A. Orihuela-Trujillo ◽  
P. Roldan-Santiago ◽  
E. Arch-Tirado ◽  
C. Vázquez-Cruz ◽  
...  

The present study evaluated metabolic changes in lambs during three brief periods of ewe–lamb separation, namely 1 min (T1), 10 min (T10) and 60 min (T60). The lambs were divided by age into the following three groups: 15 days (G1 = 40 lambs), 30 days (G2 = 40 lambs) and 60 days (G3 = 40 lambs). The hypothesis to be tested was that breaking the ewe–lamb bond at different ages and for these brief time periods will cause significant metabolic changes in the lambs. To this end, blood samples were taken from the three test groups 24 h before separation to establish reference values (RVs), and again at the end of the three separation times. The following blood variables were analysed for all three study groups: glucose (mg/dL), lactate (mg/dL), calcium (Ca2+, mmol/L), sodium (Na+, mmol/L), potassium (K+, mmol/L), haematocrit (HTC, %), pCO2 (mmHg), pO2 (mmHg), HCO3– (mmol/L) and pH. Results showed that the G1 lambs suffered the greatest metabolic changes for the variables pO2, pCO2, glucose, lactate, pH, HCO3–, Ca2+, Na+, K+ and HCT. With respect to time, the first 10 min of separation from the mother induced marked metabolic changes in the 15-, 30- and 60-day-old lambs, but, at 60 min, the G2 and G3 lambs tended to recover their physiological RVs, while the G1 lambs did not. These findings showed that breaking the ewe–lamb bond immediately generated metabolic changes in the lambs even though they remained in a familiar, habitual environment. They also indicated that the age of the lambs at separation was a significant factor, as the older animals tended to re-establish their RVs after the metabolic changes, likely because their physiological compensating mechanisms are more efficient, or perhaps because the intensity of attachment to the mother decreases with greater age.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document