Aim The objective of this study was to determine a formula for estimating the liveweight in West African donkeys. Materials and Methods Liveweight and a total of 6 body measurements were carried out on 1352 donkeys from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Senegal. The correlations between liveweight and body measurements were determined, and the most correlated body measurements with liveweight we...

Background: For the last few years, researchers have been interested in developing a method for chemical sterilization which may be a better alternative to surgical castration. An ideal chemical sterilant would be one that effectively arrests spermatogenesis and androgenesis as well as libido with absence of toxic or other side effects. Calcium chloride in various solutions and concentrations h...

Donkeys and mules are frequently kept as companion animals for horses and ponies, with these different equids often being considered a homogenous group. However, the extent to which domestic equids form inter-specific bonds and display similar social behaviour when living in a mixed herd has not previously been studied. Here we compare the social organization of these three (sub)species when ho...

Linguatula serrata is an arthropod of the class pentastomida, found worldwide. It has a zoonotic importance to humans either by ingestion of nymphs (nasopharyngeal linguatulosis) or by ingestion of eggs (visceral linguatulosis). This study aimed to record the prevalence rate of this zoonotic parasite in camels and goats as well as experimental infestation of dogs to collect and identify the adu...

The aim of this trial was to study the concentration of zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), selenium (Se), cobalt (Co) and iodine (I) in milk and blood serum of lactating donkeys, taking into account the effects of lactation stage and dietary supplementation with trace elements. During a 3-month period, 16 clinically healthy lactating donkeys (Martina-Franca-derived population), ...

Over a period of 6 years, antemortem and postmortem examinations were performed on a number of donkeys suffering from respiratory disease. For many cases, initial diagnostic efforts failed to identify an etiology consistent with the pathologic findings. However, retrospective examination of these cases using consensus primer polymerase chain reaction, designed to recognize herpesviruses from al...

Sudan has a large and species-diverse array of domestic animals. Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) puts the Republic of Sudan–since its partition with the Republic of South Sudan in 2011–as having the third largest total livestock population of all African countries. The country ranks first to third in Africa in cattle, sheep, goat and camel numbers, third in poultry and ...

Di R., Liu Q.Y., Xie F., Hu W.P., Wang X.-Y., Cao X.-H., Pan Z.-Y., Chen G.-H., Chu M.-X. (2017): Evaluation of genetic diversity and population structure of five Chinese indigenous donkey breeds using microsatellite markers. Czech J. Anim. Sci., 62, 219–225. China had the largest population of raising donkeys in the world, however the number of Chinese indigenous donkey decreased dramatically ...

Toxoplasmosis, an important zoonosis, can be transmitted by eating meat or drinking milk of animals infected with Toxoplasma gondii. Samples were collected from 238 donkeys in the year 2010 in Italy, which included 207 females and 31 males of five breeds and crossbreeds with the average age 9 years (1 month-24 years). Sera were tested for T. gondii antibodies using a latex agglutination test an...