Santiago-Salcedo, Ashlynnette

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    Cuantificación del impacto de las condiciones ambientales sobre la temperatura vaginal del ganado Senepol puertorriqueño con musculatura doble o sencilla
    (2018-05) Santiago-Salcedo, Ashlynnette; Sánchez-Rodríguez, Héctor L.; College of Agricultural Sciences; Arcelay Ruíz, Enid; Ortiz-Colón, Guillermo; Latorre, José R.; Department of Animal Science; Soto Vélez, Jay Omar
    Senepol cattle has been recognized for its high thermoregulatory capacity. Recently, a mutation in the myostatin gene that results in the double muscle phenotype has been identified in this breed. However, it is unknown if this phenotype could alter the breed’s thermoregulatory capacity under our environmental conditions. Hereby, differences in vaginal temperature (VT), if any, between Senepol cows possessing normal musculature (NM; n=11) and their contemporaries possessing the double muscle (DM; n=8) phenotype were evaluated. The relationship between de VT and the environmental conditions, including the thermal humidity index (THI) under sun exposure and shade, air temperature (AT) under sun exposure and shade, solar radiation (SR), relative humidity (RH) under sun exposure and shade, wind velocity (WV), and gust speed (GS) was also evaluated. The vaginal temperature and environmental conditions were recorded every five minutes for five consecutive days (April 2015). The GLIMMIX procedure of SAS was used to analyze the data (averaged by hour) and to evaluate if there were any significant differences between VT and phenotypes. The CORR procedure (SAS) was utilized to evaluate the lag effect the environmental conditions may exert in the VT in 1 h intervals. An interaction (P<0.0001) between the genotype and the hour of the day affecting VT was observed. The NM cows exhibited a tendency to present higher VT averaged values than the DM cows at 1800 h (38.89 ± 0.03 vs. 38.77 ± 0.03°C; P=0.0612), 1900 h (38.92 ± 0.03 vs. 38.80 ± 0.02°C; P=0.0637), and 2100 h (38.84 ± 0.04 vs. 38.73 ± 0.03°C; P=0.0920). At 2000 h, MS cows exhibited higher TVAG values in comparison to DM cows (38.86 ±0.03 vs. 38.72 ±0.03°C; P=0.0262). When evaluating data in real time, SR was the only environmental condition that resulted in an association with TVAG, with correlation coefficients of -0.18 (P<0.0001) and -0.17 (P<0.0001) for NM and DM cows, respectively. However, the highest positive correlation coefficients between the environmental conditions and VT were observed during 5-7 lag time h in both phenotypes. These results suggest that DM cows are capable of maintaining a lower body temperature under a warm environment. The reduced visceral size in different DM breed animals may be an explanation for a low metabolic heat production helping explain the behavior observed in this investigation.