Abstract
Blood concentrations of leptin have been associated, to varying degrees, with assorted measures of fat in mammalian species. In ruminants, 0.30, 0.35 and 0.37 of the variation in leptin levels in lambs (Blache et al., 2000), older (2-7 yr) multiparous ewes (Delavaud et al., 2000) and mature, late-lactation, dairy cows (Ehrhardt et al., 2000) was attributed to variation in fat as % of liveweight (LW), backfat thickness and body condition score (BCS) respectively while a strong correlation (R_a2=0.83) between leptin and fat as % of empty body weight (EBW) was found for growing Holstein bull calves by Ehrhardt et al. (2000). The objective of the current study was to determine if leptin could be usefully related to fat in multiparous dairy cows differing widely across stages of lactation.
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