David Johnson. 1. , Kuljeet Singh. 2. 1Livestock Improvement Corporation, Hamilton, New Zealand; 2AgResearch, Ruakura Research Centre, Hamilton, New ...
Transgenerational Maternal Effects on Dairy Cattle Production in New Zealand Boyd 1Livestock
1 Gudex ,
David
1 Johnson ,
Kuljeet
2 Singh
Improvement Corporation, Hamilton, New Zealand; 2AgResearch, Ruakura Research Centre, Hamilton, New Zealand
Introduction
Results
In dairy cows, simultaneous lactation and pregnancy may result in competition of maternal resources for milk synthesis and foetal development. During this period, the energy requirements can exceed the energy ingested, particularly for cows maintained on pasture with limited supplementation as found in New Zealand. There is evidence that foetal malnutrition can influence the resultant progeny’s performance later in life1-3 and, potentially, also the performance of future generations via transgenerational epigenetics4,5.
1. Phenotypic variance and the proportions of the phenotypic variance explained by additive genetics (h2/heritability) and maternal effects (m2/maternal heritability) for each of the traits recorded for the daughters * P
