To determine the effectiveness of a single injection of vitamin A to increase litter size, 1,375 sows were assigned randomly to 11 treatment groups (125 sows per treatment). Treatments included injection of 1 x 10(6) IU of vitamin A dissolved in corn oil at weaning or on d 0, 2, 6, 10, 13, 19, 30, 70, or 110 after breeding. Sows in the control group were injected with corn oil on corresponding days. A total of 396 sows were removed from the study following treatment or treatment assignment. Therefore, farrowing data were collected for 979 sows. Injection of vitamin A did not influence (P > . 10) total litter size, live litter size, litter weight, pig weight, number of runts, or number of mummies. Mean live litter size was 10.1 +/- .1 for all sows that farrowed in the experiment. Parity group affected total litter size, live litter size, live litter weight, and number stillborn (P < .01) but not pig weight, number of runts, number of mummies, or gestation length (P > . 10). In this study, a single injection of vitamin A at any time from weaning to farrowing did not increase litter size in sows.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.2527/1999.7761532x | DOI Listing |
Ecol Evol
January 2025
Department of Zoology, Fisheries, Hydrobiology and Apiculture, Faculty of Agronomy Mendel University in Brno Brno Czech Republic.
This study evaluates the response of ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) assemblage to forest management practices by integrating species composition, body traits, wing morphology and developmental instability. Traditional approaches that rely on averaged identity-based descriptors often overlook phenotypic plasticity and functional trait variability, potentially masking species-specific responses to environmental changes. To address this, we applied a three-layered analytical approach to address this gap, utilising ground beetle occurrence and morphological trait data from Podyjí National Park, Czech Republic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Toxicol
January 2025
Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.
Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) have gained interest as drug delivery carriers due to their efficient cellular internalization and increased therapeutic effect of the loaded drug, with minimal side effects. Although recently several studies have shown the possibility to administer SLNs during pregnancy to vehicle mRNA to the placenta, data about the effect of premating exposure to SLNs on pregnancy outcome are scant. Considering that assumption of drug-delivering nanocarriers in reproductive age may potentially affect women's reproductive health, the aim of the present study was to evaluate whether repeated oral administration of SLNs to female mice prior to mating would influence key pregnancy outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Dev Orig Health Dis
January 2025
Postgraduate Program in Physiological Sciences, State University of Londrina, Londrina, Parana, Brazil.
Nutritional status during the developmental periods leads to predisposition to several diseases and comorbidities, highlighting metabolic and reproductive changes throughout adult life, and in the next generations. One of the experimental models used to induce undernutrition is litter size expansion, which decreases the availability of breast milk to pups and delays development. This work evaluated the effects of maternal undernutrition induced by litter size expansion, a maternal undernutrition preconception model, on the metabolic and reproductive alterations of the offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Key Laboratory of Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Grass-Feeding Livestock, Key Laboratory of Animal Biotechnology of Xinjiang, Ministry of Agriculture(MOA), Urumqi, 830026, Xinjiang, China.
CRISPR/Cas9 technology has been widely utilized to enhance productive performance, increase disease resistance and generate medical models in livestock. The FecB allele in sheep is a mutation in the BMPRIB gene, recognized as the first major gene responsible for the high fecundity trait in sheep, leading to an increased ovulation rate in ewe. In this study, we employed CRISPR/Cas9-mediated homologous-directed repair (HDR) to introduce a defined point mutation (c.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEndocrinology
January 2025
Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
We created the c.1286C>G stop-gain mutation found in a family with primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) at age 30 years. The Eif4enif1 C57/Bl6 transgenic mouse model contained a floxed exon 10-19 cassette with a conditional knock-in cassette containing the c.
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