Phenotypic aspects of lamb survival in Australian Merino sheep

Lamb survival in Australian Merino sheep was investigated using survival records from 14,142 lambs born between 1975 and 1983. This data set included roll calls of live lambs at birth, 7 d, marking (30 d), and weaning (110 d), which allowed 4 binomial traits (alive or dead) to be recorded for each lamb at each time interval. The average survival to weaning was 72.4% with 23% of singles, 32% of twins, and 45% of multiple-born lambs not surviving to weaning. The timing of lamb loss was consistent across birth types; 6% died within 24 h of birth, a further 14% by 7 d, 3% between 7 and 30 d, and 8% between 30 and 110 d. Partitioning of phenotypic variation revealed that after the first postpartum week, mothering ability of Australian Merino ewes is not an important factor in lamb survival. Some ewes repeatedly lose lambs at birth and in the early postnatal period, but the intraclass correlation decreased by a factor of 10 for survival after 7 d of age (0.096 at birth and 0.100 at 7 d, falling to 0.009 at marking and 0.018 at weaning). This study examined the relationships of lamb survival with lamb birth weight and found varying relationships at each time period. Whereas birth weight had a highly significant curvilinear relationship with survival to weaning, the relationship was flatter for survival to 24 h with only small differences between average birth weights and the birth weight at which survival was optimized (-0.04, 0.28, and 0.54 kg for single-, twin-, and multiple-born lambs, respectively). This suggests that any management interventions to increase birth weight may increase the risk of death to both lamb and ewe during the lambing process due to dystocia. Among twin-born lambs there was a carryover effect of losses at birth on subsequent loss in the first week of life. Survival to 7 d of age was highly dependent on the survival of the littermate, favoring those whose littermate survived, but after the first week, this trend was reversed. Lamb birthcoat score had a small positive impact on survival only at birth.