Reproductive research on farm animals for Australia--some long-distance goals

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.

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