Brief communication: Voluntary food intake of pregnant and non-pregnant red deer hinds during the gestating period

Abstract

Efficient venison production systems rely on maximum growth of deer calves before their first winter. This is facilitated by an early conception in March for an October/November calving so that the nutritional demands of lactating hinds and their offspring are better aligned with pasture growth and quality under New Zealand lowland farming conditions. However, Scott et al. (2008) have shown that for every 10 days advance in conception date, gestation length increases by about three days, negating some of the gains achieved by early conception. Asher et al. (2005) demonstrated that a moderate energy intake imbalance over the last trimester of pregnancy in red deer was compensated for by varying gestation length to ensure optimal birth weight at the time of parturition. A photoperiod-mediated reduction in voluntary food intake (VFI) during winter (Loudon, 1994) would exacerbate an energy imbalance in early-conceiving hinds as they enter the third trimester of pregnancy. It is not known if pregnant hinds have a reduced VFI during winter as has been shown to occur in non-pregnant adult red deer hinds (Loudon, 1994). In this study we tested the hypothesis that pregnancy status does not affect the photoperiod-mediated reduction in VFI during winter.