This week we discuss the popular paper published in the open access journal PLOS ONE on fetal sex programming during pregnancy biasing milk yields of Holstein dairy cattle. The full paper can be viewed here.

The study was a collaboration between Dr. Katie Hinde and Dr. Barry Bradford to explore the hypothesis that milk production in dairy cattle is influenced by the sex of the calf. We had the great fortune to interview both Dr. Hinde and Dr. Bradford for this podcast to get a more in depth look at the research and how it came about. You can connect with them through their twitter profiles @Mammals_Suck and @AnimNutr. Dr. Hinde also has a blog where she writes often about lactation, usually the human or monkey kind and she’s pretty witty.

Production records sourced from DRMS were analyzed to determine effects of fetal sex on milk yield controlling for such things as dystocia, breed, region, season, and parity and was standardized to a 305-day lactation.They found that the gender of the calf did in fact have a substantial effect of milk yield of cows. Cows giving birth to heifer calves gave on average 1.3% more milk than if they had given birth to a bull calf. The use of BST was found to eliminate this effect.

A big thanks to The Dang ‘ol Triole for this week’s podcast tune – My Baby’s Blue. You can find more of their music and show dates at: thedangoltriole.com