Assessment of lamb passive transfer

Abstract

The single most important event in the newborn lamb’s life is consumption of colostrum to initiate passive transfer of maternal antibodies. There is a paucity of information relative to assessment metrics in lambs as compared to dairy calves. Determining if criteria for successful or failure of passive transfer from calves is applicable to other newborns is of interest to facilitate evaluation of colostrum management practices in small ruminants. The objective of this study was to measure serum immunoglobin (IgG) concentration in neonatal lambs and determine relationship of serum total protein and colostrum IgG concentration to lamb serum IgG concentration.