The effect of early colonized gut microbiota on the growth performance of suckling lambs

Hanjie Xiao; Hui Yan; Peizhi Tian; Shoukun Ji; Wen Zhao; Chensi Lu; Yingjie Zhang; Yueqin Liu

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1273444

The effect of early colonized gut microbiota on the growth performance of suckling lambs

Front Microbiol. 2023 Oct 24:14:1273444. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1273444. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Hanjie Xiao^#¹, Hui Yan^#¹, Peizhi Tian^#¹, Shoukun Ji¹, Wen Zhao¹, Chensi Lu¹, Yingjie Zhang¹, Yueqin Liu¹

Affiliation

¹ College of Animal Science and Technology, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The early colonized gut microbiota during the newborn period has been reported to play important roles in the health and immunity of animals; however, whether they can affect the growth performance of suckling lambs is still unclear. In this study, a total of 84 newborn lambs were assigned into LF-1 (top 15%), LF-2 (medium 70%), and LF-3 (bottom 15%) groups according to their average body weight gain at 30 days of age. Fecal samples of lambs (LF) as well as feces (MF), vagina (VAG), colostrum (COL), teat skin (TEAT) samples of ewes, and the air sediment (AIR) in the delivery room were collected 72 h after birth, and then the 16S rRNA gene was sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform. The results showed that the early colonized gut microbiota had a significant effect on the growth performance of suckling lambs with alpha and beta diversity (p < 0.05), and we observed that the contribution of early colonized bacteria on the growth performance of lambs increased with age (from BW₃₀ at 25.35% to BW₄₅ at 31.10%; from ADG₃₀ at 33.02% to ADG₄₅ at 39.79% by measuring the relative effects of factors that influence growth performance). The early colonized gut microbiota of suckling lambs with high growth performance was similar to that in VAG, MF, and AIR (p < 0.05). With the RandomForest machine learning algorithm, we detected 11, 11, 6, and 4 bacterial taxa at the genus level that were associated with BW₃₀, BW₄₅, ADG₃₀, and ADG₄₅ of suckling lambs, respectively, and the correlation analysis showed that Butyricicoccus, Ruminococcus_gnavus_group, Ruminococcaceae_Other, and Fusobacterium could significantly affect the growth performance (BW₃₀, BW₄₅, ADG₃₀, and ADG₄₅) of suckling lambs (p < 0.05). In conclusion, the early colonized gut microbiota could significantly affect the growth performance of suckling lambs, and targeting the early colonized gut microbiota might be an alternative strategy to improve the growth performance of suckling lambs.

Keywords: RandomForest; early colonized gut microbiota; growth performance; gut signature bacteria; suckling lambs.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was funded by the Scientific Research Foundation of Hebei Agricultural University (YJ20182), the Hebei Natural Science Foundation (C2022204232), and the China Agriculture Research System of Mutton Sheep (CARS-39).