Evaluation of passive immunity in newborn lambs fed ewes or cows colostrum

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the concentrations of colostral immunoglobulins and protein fractions in milk whey from ewes and cows and blood serum from lambs to verify the passive immunity in newborn lambs. Twenty seven Ile de France lambs were used from Ile de France ewes that from the ninety days of gestation were divided into two treatments: D1 - diet to meet the nutritional requirements of last third of pregnancy and D2 - diet 20% greater than the recommended nutritional requirement for this phase, according to NRC (2007). The supply of ewes and cows colostrum was made manually in the proportion of 10% of the body weight of lambs. Colostrum samples from ewes and blood of lambs were collected to 1 hour, 24 and 48 hours after birthing. Colostrum samples from cows were collected 1 hour after giving birth. A completely randomized design was used in a 3 x 3 factorial arrangement with nine treatments (three types of colostrum: from ewes fed on requirement, above the requirement and cows and three times of evaluation: 1, 24 and 48 hours after birthing) and three replications and results were evaluated by analysis of variance and the Tukey test using the SAS program, where the significance level obtained by the F-test was defined as 5%. There were no observed differences between the protein fractions albumin, haptoglobin, ?-1 acidic glycoprotein, IgG fractions (heavy and light chains) and total IgG with 3987.3; 12.75; 27.33; 951.94; 564.59 and 1516.53 g/dL of milk whey from ewes fed on requirement and above this and cows. Between the times differences were detected in the blood serum of lambs between 1 hour and 24 or 48 hours after birthing for IgG heavy (359.07 and 1186.17 g/dL) and light chains (152.35 and 704.35 g/dL) and total IgG (511.42 and 1890.52 g/dL), as well as haptoglobin (7.70 and 14.87 g/dL) and ?-1 acid glycoprotein (22.47 and 28.62 g/dL). The use of colostrum from ewes or cows in newborn lambs secured serum concentrations of protein in blood serum these related to the transfer of passive immunity.