Reproduction Abstracts

Many studies demonstrating that the environment a pregnant female experiences can have profound and sometimes persistent effects on offspring development use extreme experimental perturbations which do not reflect the range of environments a pregnant female is actually likely to experience. We have assessed offspring reproductive development following treatments designed to reflect husbandry and management conditions that pregnant sheep or pigs encounter. Female offspring of s...

Introduction: This study determined whether the way in which pregnant ewes were handled affected gonad development in their offspring.Methods: Twin-bearing Scottish Blackface × Border Leicester ewes were either handled minimally (control, C, n=20), positively (predictable timings, soft vocal tones etc. P, n=20) or negatively (random timings, shouting and whistling etc. N, n=20) between day 65 and 100 of pregnancy. Followin...

Introduction: Following IVF, blastocysts produced from oocytes recovered from gilts fed a high fibre diet for the preceding 19 days contained more cells than blastocysts from oocytes of control-fed gilts. Oocytes were collected on day 19 of the gilts’ third oestrous cycle and matured in 10% of their own follicular fluid (FF), suggesting that FF may confer the reproductive benefits. The current study compared the protein composition of pooled FF from six high fibre-fed pig...

Introduction: This study compared uterine and placental expression of genes implicated in placental attachment and angiogenesis in two prolific (hLW and MS) and one control (LW-LD) pig breeds.Methods: Placental and endometrial tissues supplying the smallest and a normal-sized foetus within the same litter were collected from five LW-LD, five hLW and four MS gilts on days 40–45 of pregnancy. RNA was isolated and qPCR for SPP1, VEGFA...

This study determined whether variation (representative of normal UK farm conditions) in pregnant ewe management is sufficient to alter the programing of the male reproductive axis. Between days 85 and 138 of pregnancy, twin-bearing ewes were managed to either mimic ‘poor husbandry’ (PH) with a high stocking density, reduced feeding space and repeated social mixing or according to ‘best practice’ (BP) with a lower stocking density, longer feed troughs, and ...

Low birth weight observed in the ‘runt’ piglet of the litter compared to its siblings has severe consequences for neonatal and adult development that cannot be remedied post-natally. This study compared the expression of a number of candidates hypothesised to be involved in angiogenesis and placental attachment in porcine endometrial samples.Endometrial tissues supplying the smallest and normal-sized foetuses were collected from large white lan...