Developmental programming and beef production

The embryonic, fetal, and neonatal periods are the stages of life when most developmental processes occur and when cellular, tissue, organ, metabolic, and hormonal systems are established. Livestock scientists have been studying the consequences of maternal nutrition on growth and development during fetal life for the productivity of ruminants for many decades. However, in recent years, there has been increasing interest in how to manage breeding females and their offspring to either minimize the consequences of adverse environmental effects or to enhance productivity and efficiency. The idea that maternal nutrition at various stages of pregnancy can indelibly influence lifetime productivity and health of progeny has gained additional currency from more recent epidemiological studies of human populations and detailed experimental studies of rodents as well as livestock species (Greenwood et al., 2009a). These observations have formed the basis of the so-called “developmental origins hypothesis” as originally proposed by the British epidemiologist David Barker and his colleagues (Barker, 2007). Severe, prolonged undernutrition of pregnant ruminants, especially during late gestation, can permanently retard body and wool growth of their offspring (Greenwood et al., 2009a). The evidence for effects of prenatal nutrition on postnatal development of a wide variety of tissues directly related to the production of meat, milk, and wool, as well as reproduction, is now indisputable. However, despite the unqualified excitement of some researchers for these demonstrated phenomena, understanding of their quantitative significance for the productivity and management of livestock production systems is limited and requires further research. In this article, we provide a brief overview of current understanding and commercial relevance of observed postnatal responses to the management of breeding herds and discuss some future directions for research on developmental programming in beef cattle and other livestock species. More detailed summaries and interpretation of the current evidence for developmental programming in livestock is provided in recent reviews by Robinson et al. (2013), Kenyon and Blair (2014), Bell and Greenwood (2016), and Sinclair et al. (2016).