Full-flock-full-pregnancy monitoring of liveweight progression in Romane meat ewes, using a walkover-weighing system in rangelands
Résumé
Little is known about liveweight (LW) dynamics of females during pregnancy, which is more critical under rangeland conditions. In this work, we implemented fine monitoring (daily) of the LW progress of each Romane ewe belonging to the La Fage flock, throughout the whole pregnancy, and with the help of our walk-over-weighing (WoW) platform. The trial involved 279 ewes (77 primiparous and 202 multiparous) which initial average age (and LW, kg ±SEM) were 1.5 (56.5±1.98) and 4 years, 3 months old (79.3±1.15), respectively. A period of adaptation (around 2 weeks) was necessary to voluntary cross the WoW (achieved by 80% of ewes). Raw dataset outliers were automatically filtered by our free web app ORIOLE (https://oriole.sk8.inrae.fr/). The final, clean dataset was contrasted with other relevant individual information available e.g. pregnancy diagnosis at mid-pregnancy (~72± 8 d), number of fetus, litter size, sex and LW at lambing. Constant ewes’ LW progress was easily followed by the WoW, making possible to detect anomalies e.g. abortions or individual presence/absence at a given precise date. The infrastructure is ideal for making further deep interpretations such as fetus growth rate in function of litter size, lamb’ sex, the relationship with LW at lambing etc. Also, for contributing to the development of early warning systems helping to decision makings during such a critical physiological stage in the farm and beyond. This work was in the scope of the H2020 TechCare project (GA 862050).
Domaines
Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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