What is it about?
This paper, now more than 20 years old, attempts to broaden our research horizons by developing the concept of 'control systems technologies' for the management of reproduction in farm animals. The basis for such technologies already exists in the responses to environmental factors that our farm animals developed under the pressure of natural selection, over hundreds of millenia before domestication. Stress, nutrition, photoperiod, lactation, and socio-sexual cues (e.g. pheromones) can all exert profound effects on reproductive activity. We already have a good grasp of the brain pathways that respond to these factors. If we can learn how the major environmental signals exert their effects, we will be able to manipulate them.
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Why is it important?
Much of the research on reproduction in sheep, goats and cattle has emphasised technological manipulation. However, most ruminant production systems are based on the management of grazing animals, often on extensive scales. The managers of these systems need technologies that can be easily and cheaply implemented on a large scale, and that are aimed at extensive control rather than intensive manipulation. For example, for synchronizing lambing in the sheep flocks, the 'ram effect' has, and probably always will have, far more impact on extensive grazing systems than technologies based on hormone treatments. Moreover, under the pressure of public opinion, the intensive industries are going 'free range'. In addition, surgical managerial tools (such as castration) will probably have to be abandoned or replaced. To cope with such profound influences from the marketplace, new types of reproductive management systems will be needed.
Perspectives
In my 40-year career as a researcher in farm animal reproduction, I have increasingly focussed on the needs of farmers who are responsible for the vast majority of farm animals around the world. They don't need high-tech management tools because they are too expensive and labour-intensive. They need low-tech tools that are inexpensive and can be manipulated on a large scale. Moreover, they need management systems that are 'clean, green and ethical' because these are the requirements of the modern marketplace.
Professor Graeme Bruce Martin
University of Western Australia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reproductive research on farm animals for Australia--some long-distance goals, Reproduction Fertility and Development, January 1995, CSIRO Publishing,
DOI: 10.1071/rd9950967.
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