In the ovine foetus brown adipose tissue (BAT) is mainly found in the perirenal region and grows rapidly relative to body weight between 70 to 120 days of gestation (Alexander, 1978). After this stage only a small amount of BAT growth occurs in comparison with that of the whole foetus, and in the case of undernutrition may decline (Alexander, 1978). Maternal cold stress, induced by winter shearing twin-bearing pregnant ewes 8 weeks before parturition improves lamb birth weight and lamb growth rate independently of effects on maternal food intake (Symonds, Bryant and Lomax, 1986 and 1990). At the same time this can stimulate the in vivo capacity for non-shivering thermogenesis in newborn lambs (Stott and Slee, 1985). The following study extends these findings by investigating the extent to which changing the maternal metabolic environment influences BAT development over the final month of gestation.

Thirty-two Bluefaced Leicester × Swaledale ewes were housed individually at ambient temperature (−6 to 19°C) 6 weeks prior to lambing and 2 weeks later 15 ewes were shorn. Ewes were offered daily a diet comprising 200 g barley concentrate and 1 kg chopped hay. Between 116 and 145 days of gestation and within 2 h of birth ewes were humanely slaughtered with an overdose of barbiturate and foetal or neonatal perirenal BAT sampled, born from shorn or unshorn ewes. The thermogenic capacity of BAT was assessed by guanosine-5′-diphosphate (GDP) binding to uncoupling protein in mitochondrial preparations (Cooper, Dascombe, Rothwell and Vale, 1989) and the amount of mitochondrial protein measured from cytochrome Coxidase activity.