Mamels life animal

At the grocery store, I can purchase a variety of infant formulas. For example, there are formulas for very low birth weight infants, soy-based formulas for infants with dairy allergies, and low-sodium formulas for infants who need restricted salt intake. But should I be able to buy Boy Formula or Girl Formula? The answer is… maybe. Recent research has shown that in deer, monkeys, and humans, mothers make different milk for sons and daughters. No two mammalian species produce identical milk . This is because for each species, milk synthesis reflects the environment, phylogeny , behavioral care, and developmental needs of the young ( Oftedal and Iverson 1995).  In terms of environment, the mother’s diet, the climate, and the community ecology can all be associated with milk composition and volume. Closely related species are more likely to produce similar milks due to shared genes. Behavioral care relates, in part, to how often the infant nurses. Young parked in nests, burrows, dens,

This week is the  ADSA-AMPA-ASAS-CSAS-WSASAS Joint Annual Meeting  in Phoenix, AZ. Yeah that's right, its JULY and I'm heading to a conference in Phoenix. Woo. Hoo. I guess that's kind of appropriate though since mammary glands evolved from sweating... There are tons of presentations on dairy science- from animal to consumer, but the Lactation Biology Symposium on Wednesday afternoon will be off the hook! Just sayin'- The Long-Term Impact of Epigenetics and Maternal Influence on the Neonate  Through Milk-Borne Factors & Nutrient Status Chair: Michael Van Amburgh, Cornell University Sponsor: EAAP 2:00 PM Introductions.  M. Van Amburgh, Cornell University . 2:05 PM EAAP-ASAS Speaker Exchange Presentation: Role of colostrum and colostrum components on glucose metabolism  in neonatal calves.  H. M. Hammon*, Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), Dummerstorf, Germany . 2:40 PM Nutrition of the dam affects mammary gland development and milk production in the off

Milk is everywhere. From the dairy aisle at the grocery store to the explosive cover of the Mother’s Day issue of Time magazine , the ubiquity of milk makes it easy to take for granted. But surprisingly, milk synthesis is evolutionarily older than mammals. Milk is even older than dinosaurs. Moreover, milk contains constituents that infants don’t digest, namely oligosaccharides, which are the preferred diet of the neonate’s intestinal bacteria ( nom nom nom! )  And milk doesn’t just feed the infant, and the infant’s microbiome; the symbiotic bacteria are IN mother’s milk. Evolutionary Origins of Lactation The fossil record, unfortunately, leaves little direct evidence of the soft-tissue structures that first secreted milk. Despite this, paleontologists can scrutinize morphological features of fossils, such as the presence or absence of milk teeth ( diphyodonty ), to infer clues about the emergence of “milk.” Genome-wide surveys of the expression and function of mammary genes across dive