Study of the influence of genotype and rearing method on muscle fibre characteristics in suckling goat kids

SIMPLE SUMMARY

Muscle fibres have an important impact on meat quality. There are different types of skeletal muscle fibres, mainly oxidative and glycolytic. The present study showed that dairy breeds and goat kids raised with milk replacer had less oxidative fibres than meat breeds and goat kids raised with their dams. In addition, the muscle fibres measured in this study were smaller in dairy breeds and kids raised with milk replacer than in meat breeds and goat kids raised with the dams.

ABSTRACT

Single born male goat kids (n = 160) from eight breeds, Florida (FL), del Guadarrama (GU), Majorera (MA), Palmera (PA), Payoya (PY), Retinta (RE), Tinerfeña (TF) and Verata (VE) were involved in the present study. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of genotype and rearing method on muscle fibre populations and morphology. Two different rearing methods were used: natural suckling (NS) and milk replacer (MR). At least 300 fibres from the Semimembranosus muscle of each experimental animal were labelled as Type I or Type II using immunohistochemistry. In this study, the Type II fibres were bigger than Type I. In addition, the VE breed displayed the highest percentage of Type I fibres, and the MA, PA and TF breeds the lowest. On the contrary, the VE breed displayed the lowest percentage of Type II fibres, while the MA breed showed the highest. Goat kids from the VE, RE, GU and PY breeds displayed bigger fibres (i.e. Types I and II) than the other studied breeds. Regarding the rearing method, animals fed MR displayed more presence of Type II fibres than Type I fibres. Natural suckling animals presented bigger fibres (i.e. Types I and II) than MR goat kids.

KEYWORDS:

• Breed
• rearing method
• milk replacer
• goat kid
• muscle fibre

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).