The effect of male co-twins on milk and kid production, and productive lifespan of goats during their adult life
Introduction
Factors affecting meat and milk production in livestock and, in particular, goats, have been studied extensively. Suckling and milk replacer of young kids, nutrition and feeding practices, sex, breed, age, body mass, and litter size can influence meat production in this species (for a review, see Goetsch et al., 2011b). Extrinsic factors such as production system, nutrition, health of the udder, stage of lactation, season, parity, photoperiod, lactation length, suckling and milking frequency, and intrinsic factors such as breed and genetics, litter size, and age of the goats are some of the factors that can influence milk production in goats (for a review, see Goetsch et al., 2011a). In addition, however, prenatal conditions can have significant effects on the animal in adult life, but usually have not been included in studies of the factors that influence meat and milk production.
Parental exposure to stress or glucocorticoids either before or during pregnancy have profound influences on the neurodevelopment, neuroendocrine function, and behaviors of the offspring (for a review, see Hamada and Matthews, 2019). Furthermore, prenatal exposure to famine and aging (Roseboom, 2019), or the amount of sex hormones, especially testosterone and estradiol, to which developing offspring are exposed in utero (Berenbauma and Beltz, 2016) are factors that can influence the productivity of livestock. Fremartinism is the main example of the consequences of exposure to hormones in utero. Freemartinism is rare in livestock species other than cattle, e.g., small ruminants, and some of the consequences of being gestated with male or female co-twins on the adult life of sheep and goats have been described (Padula et al., 2005). Blastocyst production rates in lambs born with a female co-twin were significantly higher than were those from lambs born with a male co-twin (Kelly et al., 2017), and goats born with male co-twins have shorter productive lifespans than do those that do not (Korsten et al., 2009). Brown et al. (2016) reported that ewes born co-twin to a ram had an advantage over ewes born co-twin to a ewe, which amounted to 15.55 kg in lifetime litter-weight weaned per-ewe. In humans, the presence of a male twin is correlated with a reduction in fertility and socioeconomic success of female co-twins (Bütikofer et al., 2019)
The objective of this study was to determine whether the presence of male co-twins affected the productive lifespan, and kid and milk production in does of the Florida goat dairy breed.
Section snippets
Animals and dataset
This study was based on the kidding (n = 33,116) and monthly milk control records (n = 96,359) of 13,194 Florida goats in the database of the Spanish Florida Goat Breeders Association (ACRIFLOR). The dataset included single-born (n = 3727), twin-born (n = 7573), triplet-born (n = 1784), and quadruplet-born (n = 110) goats (Table 1), and the analyses included goats that had finished their productive life, only.
Information for each goat included the following: birth date, litter composition
Longevity and reproductive variables
Singleton and twin-born goats had significantly longer productive lives than did triplet-born (P < 0.05) and quadruplet-born animals (P < 0.01) (Fig. 1). Females born with male co-twins had shorter lives (P < 0.05) than did female goats born with female co-twins (Table 2).
Twin-born goats had the highest number of parturitions (P < 0.05), but the number of parturitions per year was not correlated with type of birth (Fig. 1); however, quadruplet-born goats that had three female co-twins had
Discussion
In this study, goats that had been born with male co-twins had more parturitions and kids per year, and produced more milk than did single-born goats or goats born with no male co-twins, even though all had similar milking lengths; however, they had the shortest productive lifespan and the lowest lifetime production of milk. Although there is considerable evidence that the sex of the co-twin has a significant effect on meat production in sheep, to our knowledge, this is the first study to
Conclusion
This study has demonstrated that the presence of male co-twins had a positive effect on the production traits of Florida dairy goats; however, those goats had the shortest productive lifespan which limited their lifetime production. Typically, all-female twin-born kids are chosen as replacement does; however, if reproductive lifespan could be extended, possibly through management practices or by identifying the factors that reduce lifespan, goats that have male co-twins might be the most
Author statement
José Alfonso Abecia, Manuel Sánchez, Francisco Arrebola, as coauthors of the manuscript The effect of male co-twins on milk and kid production, and productive lifespan of goats during their adult life, which has been submitted for publication in Livestock Science DECLARE:
Those all have participated in the research and/or article preparation, with the following roles:
Conceptualization JAA, FA; Data curation MS, FA; Formal analysis JAA; Investigation JAA; Methodology JAA, MS, FA;Supervision JAA;
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Acknowledgements
We thank Bruce MacWhirter for the English edition of the manuscript. Partially funded by Gobierno de Aragon (Group BIOFITER, Feder 2014-2020 "Construyendo Europa desde Aragón").
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