PAPEL DA NUTRIÇÃO SOBRE A REPRODUÇÃO OVINA (The role of nutrition on reproduction of sheep)

Nutrition plays a major influence on reproductive efficiency directly, through supply of nutrients to the physiological functions, and indirectly in the synthesis of hormones and the amount of receptors on cells and their metabolic interactions. The monitoring of body condition score is still the most widely used tool to nutritional monitoring. However, works done in Brazil have shown that the scale score still lacks evaluation and adapted to hair sheep raised in Brazil. Besides this influence, nutrition plays an acute or immediate effect which is also explored in the production system, as the flushing o nutrients, which consists of a supplementation at levels above the requirement of the animals aiming stimulate ovulation rate, size of ovarian follicles and embryo survival. The effect of flushing is already well documented, as well as its limitations. Advances in this issue are the flushing of nutrients with recognized role in reproduction such as fatty acid which must be more studied. Finally, one of the most studied fields currently is the fetal programming or the impact of nutrition during pregnancy on productive and reproductive aspects of the new generation. The increasing knowledge in this area has demonstrated that the success in animal production begins before birth and even in the early embryonic development impacting the entire productive life of the animal.