Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Female age and parity in horses: how and why does it matter?

Female age and parity in horses: how and why does it matter? Although puberty can occur as early as 14–15 months of age, depending on breed and use, the reproductive career of mares may continue to advanced ages. Once mares are used as broodmares, they will usually produce foals once a year until they become unfertile, and their productivity can be enhanced and/or prolonged through embryo technologies. There is a general consensus that old mares are less fertile, but maternal age and parity are confounding factors because nulliparous mares are usually younger and older mares are multiparous in most studies. This review shows that age critically affects cyclicity, folliculogenesis, oocyte and embryo quality as well as presence of oviductal masses and uterine tract function. Maternal parity has a non-linear effect. Primiparity has a major influence on placental and foal development, with smaller foals at the first gestation that remain smaller postnatally. After the first gestation, endometrial quality and uterine clearance capacities decline progressively with increasing parity and age, whilst placental and foal birthweight and milk production increase. These combined effects should be carefully balanced when breeding mares, in particular when choosing and caring for recipients and their foals. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Reproduction Fertility and Development CSIRO Publishing

Female age and parity in horses: how and why does it matter?

Download PDF
65 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/csiro-publishing/female-age-and-parity-in-horses-how-and-why-does-it-matter-acauQWTxsl

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
CSIRO Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published by CSIRO Publishing
ISSN
1031-3613
eISSN
1448-5990
DOI
10.1071/RD21267
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Although puberty can occur as early as 14–15 months of age, depending on breed and use, the reproductive career of mares may continue to advanced ages. Once mares are used as broodmares, they will usually produce foals once a year until they become unfertile, and their productivity can be enhanced and/or prolonged through embryo technologies. There is a general consensus that old mares are less fertile, but maternal age and parity are confounding factors because nulliparous mares are usually younger and older mares are multiparous in most studies. This review shows that age critically affects cyclicity, folliculogenesis, oocyte and embryo quality as well as presence of oviductal masses and uterine tract function. Maternal parity has a non-linear effect. Primiparity has a major influence on placental and foal development, with smaller foals at the first gestation that remain smaller postnatally. After the first gestation, endometrial quality and uterine clearance capacities decline progressively with increasing parity and age, whilst placental and foal birthweight and milk production increase. These combined effects should be carefully balanced when breeding mares, in particular when choosing and caring for recipients and their foals.

Journal

Reproduction Fertility and Development – CSIRO Publishing

Published: Nov 15, 2021

There are no references for this article.