ASAS Centennial Paper: Animal breeding research and the Journal of Animal Science: A century of co-evolution.

Animal breeding reports in the Journal of Animal Science (JAS) and in its predecessor, Proceedings of the American Society of Animal Production, were counted and categorized. In 22 volumes of the Proceedings of the American Society of Animal Production, 155 articles had animal breeding content, of which 54% were research reports, 17% extension communications, and 28% syntheses or reviews. Several of the latter featured advice from the livestock industry to the scientific community.

Response to intensity of reproduction in mouse lines resistant or susceptible to fescue toxicosis.

Our objective was to examine whether mouse lines divergently selected for response to fescue toxicosis differed in the impact of increasing reproductive intensity on growth, final weight or first and second parity reproduction. Resistant (R) and susceptible (S) females were never mated (NR), mated only once (low reproduction, LR), mated after their first litter was weaned (moderate reproduction, MR) or paired continuously with a male (high reproduction, HR), allowing concurrent pregnancy and lactation. Final weight was significantly higher in mated than in not mated females (31.

Inheritance of resistance to facial eczema: a review of research findings from sheep and cattle in New Zealand.

Facial eczema (FE) is a costly problem to New Zealand pastoral agriculture, and has a detrimental impact on animal wellbeing. Incidence and severity of the disease can be reduced by grazing management and zinc prophylaxis. An additional strategy is to breed animals that are genetically resistant to intoxication with sporidesmin, the causative mycotoxin.

Effects of feeding endophyte-infected fescue seed on reproductive traits of male mice divergently selected for resistance or susceptibility to fescue toxicosis.

Our objective was to determine whether consumption of endophyte-infected fescue seed affected male reproduction differently in a mouse line previously selected for susceptibility (S) to fescue toxicosis than in a line previously selected for fescue toxicosis resistance (R). For 8 weeks following weaning, 48 males per line were provided diets containing 50% of either endophyte-infected (E+) or endophyte-free (E-) fescue seed. Each male was then paired with a female for 1 week, with litter size and weight recorded from subsequent births.

Sleep time following anesthesia in mouse lines selected for resistance or susceptibility to fescue toxicosis.

In previous work, a mouse line selected for resistance (R) to fescue toxicosis had higher activities of two hepatic Phase II detoxification enzymes than a mouse line selected for fescue toxicosis susceptibility (S). The primary objective of the present study was to determine whether those same lines also differed in hepatic Phase I enzyme activity, estimated from sleep time (ST) following sodium pentobarbital anesthesia. Additional objectives were to determine whether ST differences between lines were modulated by endophyte-infected fescue in the diet (with or without an enzyme inducer) and whether ST of individual mice was correlated with the effect of a toxin-containing diet on the postweaning growth of those mice.