Sustainable control of caprine reproduction through sociosexual interactions - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement
Conference Papers Year : 2024

Sustainable control of caprine reproduction through sociosexual interactions

Abstract

Reproductive seasonality is a characteristic of male and female goat breeds from temperate and subtropical latitudes. The sexual season, charactrerized by maximal spermatogenetic and sexual behavior activities in males and in estrus behavior and ovulatory cyclicity in females, generally occurs in autumn and winter. However, males are generally starting and ending earlier their sexual season than females, this advance being more marked in subtropical latitudes (i.e. 3 vs 1 month). This reproductive seasonality causes a seasonal production of milk and meat. Regardless of the latitude of origin of the goats, this seasonality is, in both sexes, mainly synchronized by the annual variations in photoperiod, which induce changes in estradiol and testosterone negative feedbacks on LH secretion, constituting the main neuroendocrine mechanism responsible for reproductive seasonality. Nonethless, the sociosexual interactions between bucks and goats and between bucks themselves can break the natural inhibition of sexual activity during the seasonal sexual rest. Indeed, the introduction of a male into a group of seasonal anestrous goats immediately leads to a resumption of the activity of the hypothalamo-pituitary-gonad axis, allowing females to display estrus and ovulations within few days after joining (Walkden-Brown et al., 1999). This is the "short-term male effect". Recently, we described that the permanent presence of bucks made sexually active by photoperiodic treatments stimulate sexual activity during seasonal anestrus and allows females to ovulate throughout the year (Delgadillo et al., 2015). This is what we called the "long-term male effect". Finally, we recently described that, as in females, the introduction of a sexually active buck into a group of seasonally inactive bucks in sexual rest immediately leads to a resumption of the activity of the hypothalamo-pituitary-gonad axis, improving spermatogenetic and sexual behavior activities of recipient bucks. This is what we called the “buck-to-buck-effect”, or more generally, the “male-to-male effect” (Delgadillo et al., 2022). These three sexual biostimulation techniques to control caprine reproduction in a sustainable way, without the use of exogenous hormones, will be described in the present article.
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Dates and versions

hal-04619684 , version 1 (21-06-2024)

Identifiers

  • HAL Id : hal-04619684 , version 1

Cite

José A Delgadillo, Philippe Chemineau. Sustainable control of caprine reproduction through sociosexual interactions. 32. World Buiatrics Congress, May 2024, Cancun, Mexico. pp.169-175. ⟨hal-04619684⟩
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