Experimental Data from Lacaune and Merino Sheep Provide New Methodological and Theoretical Grounds to Investigate Autumn Lambing in Past Husbandries
2024
Balasse, Marie | Chemineau, Philippe | Parisot, Sara | Fiorillo, Denis | Keller, Matthieu | BioArchéologie, Interactions Sociétés Environnements (BioArch) ; Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) | Physiologie de la reproduction et des comportements [Nouzilly] (PRC) ; Institut Français du Cheval et de l'Equitation [Saumur] (IFCE)-Université de Tours (UT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE) | Domaine expérimental de La Fage (UEF) ; Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE) | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) | INRAE and the CNRS through the MITI interdisciplinary programs (“AgroPaléoRepro” project, 2019-2020)
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Показать больше [+] Меньше [-]Английский. In temperate Europe, sheep predominantly mate in autumn and lamb in the spring. In contrast, present-day Mediterranean husbandries practice autumn lambing, with benefits in terms of natural resource use and seasonal availability of animal products. Autumnal lambing is enabled by the conjunction of a capability of some Mediterranean breeds for "out-of-season " breeding, intentional scheduling by the herder, and autumnal rains providing forage resources for lactation. Autumn and winter sheep births have been demonstrated at Neolithic sites in the western Mediterranean. More works are needed to define the conditions leading to their emergence. This line of research uses oxygen isotope analysis in sheep teeth and involves modern references to define birth season. The existing references were biased in favor of winter and spring births. In this study, we enlarge them with 30 additional teeth from Lacaune and Merino sheep, including mainly summer and autumn births. Experiments were also conducted on Lacaune ewes, to address theoretical grounds on the implementation of autumn births: it implies to preserve females from conceptions by separating the sexes in autumn and re-introducing the rams among females in the spring. This second step also produces a "male effect. " We show that in the Lacaune breed, the proportion of spontaneously cyclic ewes in the spring is low in the absence of males and remains minor when the ewes are left in permanent contact with rams. On the other hand, we were able to implement a highly efficient male effect using non-sexually stimulated males, demonstrating that this practice could have been implemented by Neolithic herders.
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