Predicting and enhancing lifetime resilience in dairy cattle

预测和增强奶牛的终生复原力

• 批准号: BB/W020408/1
• 负责人: Martin Green
• 金额: $ 25.59万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FW020408%2F1
• 关键词: Predicting; enhancing; lifetime; resilience; dairy

Resilience in animals refers to their capacity to cope with short-term environmental disturbances, with a fast return to normal status and it is an acknowledged beneficial trait of farmed livestock. Resilient cows are considered those with a high probability of completing multiple lactations, with good reproductive performance, that encounter few health problems which they overcome easily, and that are efficient and consistent in their milk production. A major contributor to an individuals' ability to be robust or resilient over their life-course is the "Developmental Origins of Health and Disease" (DOHaD), whereby insults to the developing embryo/foetus (e.g. nutritional insults, inflammatory response to disease/toxins, therapeutics, elevated concentrations of hormones) at specific developmentally sensitive time points, can alter an individuals' susceptibility to disease. Resilience in dairy cattle at both individual and herd level is therefore considered critical to optimise health, welfare, and productivity and to reduce the environmental footprint of dairy farming as the industry targets net-zero. Rather than considering health or welfare according to individual diseases, traits or syndromes, enhanced resilience allows the possibility of a wide-ranging enhancement of health and wellbeing. Therefore, enhancing resilience could provide a step change to reduce endemic disease in dairy cows. The aim of this 12-month study is to quantify in-utero environmental factors that contribute to post-partum lifetime resilience in dairy cows, using a very large set of data (>30,000 cow lifetime records).Our hypothesis for the research is that perturbations to dairy cows during developmentally sensitive stages of early pregnancy influence lifetime resilience of their offspring. We will quantify and predict resilience using a large dataset containing detailed lifetime records for the offspring that can be mapped back to a wide of maternal-mediated stressors experienced by the offspring at specific stages of pregnancy. We will measure the effect of known on-farm stressors during specific stages of pregnancy and evaluate how these underpin lifetime resilience. During the 12 month project we will;1) Produce an optimised, validated predictive model of lifetime resilience for dairy cows from events that occur while in utero.2) Identify and quantify the major factors and events during pregnancy that impact on lifetime resilience and thereby evaluate the extent to which resilience can be enhanced through optimised herd management.Outcomes:i) A method to predict lifetime resilience for dairy cows at birth, co-developed by farmers and vets, to inform selective breeding programmes on-farm.ii) Identification of major factors during pregnancy (and their relative importance) that impact the lifetime resilience of the offspring to inform management strategies to optimise resilience on-farm. HOW WILL THIS HELP FARMERS? With an accurate knowledge of lifetime resilience for dairy heifers at birth, a farmer will be able to; i) avoid breeding from replacements with low resilience (evidence indicates that in utero insults can be transmitted via genetic changes, giving transgenerational effects), ii) minimise the factors during pregnancy that have a deleterious impact on resilience (success being monitored by an overall herd resilience score), iii) in the short term, use improved management strategies for the subset of animals with low scores, to mitigate their low resilience.Translation to farmer: Our industry partner has developed a software platform to house the models, construct the resilience predictions real time and deliver results direct to farmers - therefore the route to translate research findings to practice is already in place.

动物的韧性是指它们应对短期环境干扰的能力，并迅速恢复到正常状态，这是养殖牲畜公认的有益特征。有韧性的奶牛被认为是那些完成多次哺乳的可能性很高、繁殖性能良好、几乎不会遇到容易克服的健康问题、高效和持续产奶的奶牛。“健康和疾病的发育起源”(DOHAD)是个人在其生命过程中保持健壮或复原能力的主要因素，在特定的发育敏感时间点，对发育中的胚胎/胎儿的侮辱(如营养侮辱、对疾病/毒素的炎症反应、治疗方法、激素浓度升高)可以改变个人对疾病的易感性。因此，奶牛在个体和牛群水平上的韧性被认为对于优化健康、福利和生产力以及减少奶牛业的环境足迹至关重要，因为该行业的目标是实现净零。增强的复原力不是根据个别疾病、特征或症状来考虑健康或福利，而是允许广泛增强健康和福祉的可能性。因此，增强复原力可以为减少奶牛地方病提供一个阶段性的变化。这项为期12个月的研究的目的是使用一组非常大的数据(30,000头奶牛的一生记录)来量化影响奶牛产后一生韧性的宫内环境因素。我们对这项研究的假设是，在怀孕早期发育敏感阶段对奶牛的干扰会影响它们后代的一生韧性。我们将使用一个包含后代详细生活记录的大型数据集来量化和预测韧性，这些记录可以追溯到后代在怀孕特定阶段经历的广泛的母体介导的压力来源。我们将测量已知的农场应激源在怀孕特定阶段的影响，并评估这些压力如何支撑一生的弹性。在12个月的项目中，我们将：1)根据子宫内发生的事件为奶牛制作一个优化的、经过验证的终生复原力预测模型。2)识别和量化怀孕期间影响终生复原力的主要因素和事件，从而评估通过优化牛群管理可以增强复原力的程度。结果：i)由农民和兽医共同开发的一种预测奶牛出生时终生复原力的方法，为农场上的选择性育种计划提供信息。ii)确定怀孕期间影响后代终生复原力的主要因素(及其相对重要性)，以便为管理策略提供信息，以优化牧场复原力。这将如何帮助农民？对产奶小母牛出生时的一生复原力有了准确的了解，农民将能够；I)避免从低韧性的替代物中繁殖(证据表明，子宫内的侮辱可以通过基因变化传播，产生跨代影响)，ii)尽量减少怀孕期间对韧性有有害影响的因素(成功通过总体牛群韧性评分进行监控)，iii)在短期内，对得分低的动物子集使用改进的管理策略，以缓解它们的低弹性。翻译为Farmer：我们的行业合作伙伴已经开发了一个软件平台来容纳模型，实时构建弹性预测，并将结果直接提供给农民-因此，将研究成果转化为实践的路线已经到位。