Programming of development during embryonic and fetal life in cattle and its consequences for
subsequent production

At an early stage in their education, animal scientists are taught that an animal’s phenotype depends on a combination of genetic and environmental effects. Indeed, efforts to increase the productive capacity of livestock have depended largely on two approaches – selection of allelic variants to genes that confer superior production and manipulating the environment to enhance the ability of animals to realize the potential of those genes. From a genetics point of view, environment includes everything that is not genetic including, as examples, nutrition, meteorological conditions, exposure to pathogens, and human interventions such as treatment with growth regulators or reproductive hormones, vaccinations and other veterinary procedures ...