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Dietary Selenium Requirement of Sheep Fed a Practical-Type Diet as Assessed by Tissue Glutathione Peroxidase and Other Criteria^{1, 2,}

University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706

Abstract

Fifty-four pregnant ewes were fed corn and low-moisture, legume-grass silage (50% dry matter) diets containing .02, .05, .07, .09, .12 or .52 ppm selenium (Se) on a dry matter basis from 2 months prepartum through parturition and lactation. Following weaning at 10 weeks of age, their lambs were continued on diets of similar Se concentration for an additional 8 weeks. Dietary Se supplementation increased erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and Se concentration in whole blood of both the ewes and their lambs. There was a high correlation (r = .939) between GSH-Px in RBC and Se concentration in whole blood of lambs. Dietary Se level decreased the incidence of abnormally high plasma creatine phosphokinase (CPK) which is considered as a criterion of subclinical nutritional muscular dystrophy (NMD) in lambs, but no gross signs of dystrophy were observed. Tissue GSH-Px of lambs increased as dietary Se increased and approached a plateau at somewhat above .12 ppm dietary Se. There was an improvement (P<.05) in 18-week body weight gain of the lambs by supplementation with .10 or .50 ppm Se, however, no significant difference was observed between the four lowest dietary Se groups. Based upon all of the criteria employed, the Se requirement of reproducing ewes and their lambs fed a practical-type diet was approximately .12 ppm Se on a dry matter basis.

¹ Research supported by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison and by Public Health Service Grant No. AM 14881. Paper No. 670 from the Department of Meat and Animal Science. Technical assistance by Darell Kolstad is acknowledged.

² Departments of Meat and Animal Science, Nutritional Sciences and Biochemistry.