Effect of Different Fatty Acid Profile on the Maternal and Finishing Diet on Performance and Carcass Characteristics in Lambs.

Ana C. Carranza Martin¹, Danielle N. Coleman², Lyda Garcia³, Cecilia C. Furnus¹ and Alejandro E. Relling⁴, (1)Veterinary Genetic Institute “Ing. Fernando Noel Dulout” National Research Council, La Plata, Argentina, (2)Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinoins, Urbana, IL, (3)The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, (4)Department of Animal Sciences, OSU, Wooster, OH

Maternal nutrition produces metabolic and endocrine changes that may cause fetal programming effects. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effects of feeding an enriched diet with EPA and DHA to ewes during late gestation and its effect on offspring performance and metabolism during the finishing period. Lambs used were born from ewes fed the last 50 days of gestation either with a diet containing 0.39% Ca salts of a palmitic fatty acid distillate (PFAD), or ewes fed Ca salts enriched with EPA and DHA (PUFA). After weaning lambs were blocked by BW, and assigned to a finishing diet containing Ca salts of PFAD or PUFA at 1.5% of the DM. A 2x2 factorial arrangement of treatments was used representing ewe diet by finishing diet. Lambs (n=70, 37.9 ±0.4Kg) were weighed (BW), then blood sampled, for glucose and NEFA measurements, on d 1, 14, 28 and 42. Dry matter intake (DMI) was measured daily. On d 43, 14 females and 14 male lambs were slaughtered and hot carcass weight (HCW), body wall (Bwall) and rib eye area (REA) were evaluated. Lambs born from PUFA supplemented dams had heavier BW (P < 0.01). There was a time by finishing diet interaction for BW (P = 0.03), lambs start the finishing phase with similar BW, but lambs fed PFAD diet finished heavier than lambs fed PUFA diet. Lambs fed with PFAD had a greater DMI (P < 0.01) than PUFA lambs. There were no significant differences in glucose and NEFA (P > 0.1). Lambs fed with PFAD showed a tendency for a heavier HCW (P < 0.07). No effects of maternal or finishing diet on Bwall or REA were observed. In conclusion, BW could be increased by feeding PUFA diets to the dams on the last 50 days of gestation or feeding PFAD diets during the finishing diets. The increase in BW on finishing diets was due to an increase in DMI. There is no interaction between dam and finishing diet FA supplementation.

Table 1: Performance of supplemented lambs with PFAD or PUFA during the finishing period and born from ewes supplemented with similar FA profile.

Dam	PFAD		PUFA		P-value1
Lamb	PFAD	PUFA	PFAD	PUFA	dam	treat	treat x time
BW, kg	45.3	43.8	46.8	46.4	0.01	0.18	0.03
DMI, kg	1.66	1.48	1.59	1.52	0.7	0.01	0.59
ADG, kg	0.39	0.34	0.36	0.35	0.74	0.09	0.73
HCW, kg	30.2	29.2	30.6	29.1	0.71	0.07	-

¹No effect (P > 0.1) for Dam x Treatment or Dam x time x treatment