Peripartum energy metabolism of prolific ewes and their progeny in response to prepartum feeding and litter size
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• How prolific ewe energy metabolism is affected by litter size and dietary energy? • Ewe intake was inversely related to litter size in the last week of gestation. • Ewes carrying larger litters mobilized their adipose tissue more extensively. • Higher dietary energy had positive effect on the metabolic status of prolific ewes. • Providing better-adapted diets to the energy requirements of highly prolific ewes. In late gestation, the increased energy demand to support the rapid fetal growth can induce an acute negative energy balance associated with a high risk of pregnancy toxemia, especially for prolific ewes (carrying two or more fetuses). The current study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary energy during the last 6 weeks prepartum on the energy metabolism dynamic responses and the newborn lamb metabolic profile in prolific ewes. Forty-five crossbred (Dorset × Romanov) ewes were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 dietary energy densities: E CTRL : 8.36 MJ of metabolizable energy ( ME )/kg DM for weeks −6 to −3 relative to lambing, followed by 10.01 MJ ME/kg DM for weeks −2 and −1; E INCR : weekly increments from 7.99 to 12.69 MJ ME/kg DM; and E HIGH : 10.87 MJ ME/kg DM for the last 6 weeks of gestation. Dry matter intake ( DMI ; daily) and energy intake ( MEI ; daily), blood concentrations of beta-hydroxybutyrate ( BHB ) and glucose (every other day), as well as plasma concentrations of non-esterified fatty acids ( NEFAs ; weekly), BW and body condition score ( BCS ; twice weekly) were determined throughout the experimental period. The effect of time on DMI and MEI varied based on dietary energy densities and litter size. During the last week before lambing, DMI decreased for E HIGH and E INCR ewes, as well as for ewes carrying quadruplets. On average, during week −5 to week −2 of gestation, E HIGH promoted the highest DMI and MEI, resulting in an increase of 0.16 BCS points between the pretreatment week and week −1 prepartum. In contrast, during the same period, BCS of E CTRL and E INCR ewes decreased by 0.35 and 0.19 points, respectively, which was reflected by higher NEFA concentrations compared with E HIGH ewes. The greater litter size was also associated with decreased BCS. Compared with twin-bearing ewes, for which BCS remained stable, BCS decreased for triplet-, and even more intensively for quadruplet-bearing ewes. Consequently, plasma NEFA concentrations were higher for quadruplet-bearing ewes than for twin− and triplet-bearing ewes, especially during the last week prepartum. Blood BHB concentrations increased from 0.63 to 1.13 mM over time. Regardless of dietary treatments, in the last week prepartum, blood BHB concentrations increased for quadruplet-bearing ewes, being 2.6 and 2.2 times greater than for twin− and triplet-bearing ewes, respectively. These results suggest that dynamic responses of energy metabolism in late gestation of prolific ewes are influenced by both dietary energy level and litter size.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".