Artificial insemination of farm animals is very common in today's animal husbandry in the developed world, especially for breeding dairy cattle (75% of all inseminations) and swine (up to 85% of all inseminations). It is used for breeding buffaloes, sheep, goats, horses, dogs and a variety of laboratory animals as well. It allows a male to inseminate a much larger number of females and to use t...

in this study, 100 moghani sheep from breeding station located in jaafarabad, moghan were genotyped for exon 1 of igf-i gene, using pcr-sscp. different band patterns were obtained in this site gene that was studied. based on sscp patterns, three genotypes bc, bd and bb obtained with frequencies of 65%, 26% and 9%, respectively. the genotype frequencies had a significant deviation from hwe. in a...

identification of genes affecting energy balance, milk yield and feed intake is an interesting area of researches in animal breeding. leptin gene polymorphism is associated with key economic affair. considering rich resources for animals, in our country, accomplishing a few assays to identify a gene that controls her traits with molecular genetics, and identifying the candidate genes in sheep b...

BACKGROUND Breeds with small population size are in danger of an increased inbreeding rate and loss of genetic diversity, which puts them at risk for extinction. In Sweden there are a number of local breeds, native breeds which have adapted to specific areas in Sweden, for which efforts are being made to keep them pure and healthy over time. One example of such a breed is the Swedish Gute sheep...

The five Northern European short-tailed sheep breeds present in North America are the Finnsheep, Romanov, Icelandic, Shetland and Gotland. The Finnsheep and Romanov were first imported in 1966 and 1986, respectively, for their high reproductive performance. The Shetland, Icelandic and Gotland breeds were first imported in 1980, 1985 and 2005, respectively, for the uniqueness of their physical a...

b) Numbers. The total sheep population in the Chokla distribution area was 0.53 m according to the 1972 census and 0.511 m according to the 1977 census, thus showing a slight decline. Of these, adult males and adult females were 0.049 and 0.352 m respectively. Chokla is perhaps the finest carpet-wool breed, although most Chokla wool is now being diverted to the worsted sector because of the dea...

The seasonality of breeding activity in sheep represents an important constraint in the breeding program of commercial flocks. The ‘ram effect’ is one among various techniques available to manipulate reproduction during the anoestrous season but with the advantages of being inexpensive, of easy application and free from causing problems to the consumer of animal foods (i.e. hormone residues). T...

BACKGROUND The rates of congenital disorders in Swiss sheep were determined by a questionnaire which was sent to 3,183 members of the Swiss Sheep Breeders' Association. FINDINGS A total of 993 questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 31.2%. Of these, 862 questionnaires originated from farms keeping one of the predominant Swiss sheep breeds: Swiss White Alpine sheep, Brown-Heade...

Selection for breeding animals as parents of next generation, based on genetic analyses of most important traits, became a standard for selection practices in most of the farm animal species in Slovakia. In this respect, about ten years of experience could be traced in Slovakian dairy cattle (Candrák et al., 1997) and pigs (Groeneveld and Peškovičová, 1999 and Peškovičová et. al., 1999). First ...

Muscular and lean market lambs grow more efficiently and produce a meat product more preferred by the consumer compared to poorly muscled and fat lambs. Therefore, a case can be made for selection of breeding stock, especially within the terminal sire breeds like Suffolk and Hampshire, for desired carcass composition. Since breeding stock cannot be slaughtered in order to obtain carcass measure...