Feed and reproductive efficiency differences between divergently selected lines for birthweight environmental variability in mice

Abstract

Sustainability has come to play an important role in agricultural production. A way to combine efficiency with sustainability might be by searching for robust animals that can be selected for the homogeneity of certain traits. Furthermore, the optimization of feed efficiency is one of the challenges to improve livestock genetics programmes, but this might compromise reproductive efficiency. Animals from two divergent mouse lines, regarding variability of birthweight, were used to check whether homogeneity was also related to both feed and reproductive efficiency. The objective of this study was to use these divergent lines of mice to compare them with their feed efficiency and the reproductive capacity. Animal weight, weight gain, feed intake, relative intake and cumulated transformation index were considered as feed efficiency traits. Animals from the low line had both lower weight and feed intake from 21 to 56 days. They had a worse transforming index in the three last weeks when litter size was fitted as an effect of the model, but the lines become similar if the higher litter size of the low line was not included. Reproductively, the low line performed better considering the number of females having parturitions, the number of parturitions, and with higher litter size and survival in both parturitions. Hence, the low variability line was preferred because of reproductive efficiency without seriously affecting its feed efficiency. Homogeneity seemed to be related to robustness with similar feed efficiency but higher reproductive efficiency.