The impact of the ovary and presumably ovarian-derived estrogen prior to puberty is not well defined.
We evaluated the impact of the antiestrogen tamoxifen on mammary development and expression of ESR1 and PGR in prepubertal heifers.
Tamoxifen marked reduced mammary development, PGR expression was modestly greater but ESR1 expression was markedly reduced by tamoxifen.
Putative bovine mammary stem cells (LRC) averaged less than 0.3% of total epithelial cells but were greater after tamoxifen and in the outer region.
Our findings suggest that expression of ESR1 is especially important in control of prepubertal bovine mammary development.