in order to study the seroprevalence of pestivirus infection in small ruminants of ahvaz at khouzestan province of iran, 148 sheep sera and 143 goat sera were randomly collected and tested by seroneutralization. seroneutralization was performed by nadl strain of bovine viral diarrhea virus genotype 1. the results indicated the overall seroprevanelces of 46.62% in sheep and 32.871% in goats. pre...

Paratuberculosis as well as the slow virus infections maedi/visna and jaagsiekte came to Iceland in 1933 when 20 sheep of the Karakul breed were imported from Halle, Germany. At least five of these sheep were subclinical carriers of paratuberculosis. Within 16 years paratuberculosis together with the other Karakul diseases (maedi/visna and jaagsiekte) almost ruined sheep farming, the main agric...

We investigated commercially available dermal sheep collagen either cross-linked with hexamethylenediisocyanate, or cross-linked with glutaraldehyde. In previous in vitro studies we could discriminate primary, i.e. extractable, and secondary cytotoxicity, due to cell-biomaterial interactions, i.e. enzymatic actions. To develop dermal sheep collagen for clinical applications, we focused in this ...

BACKGROUND Animal models should display important characteristics of the human disease. Sheep have been considered particularly useful to study allergic airway responses to common natural antigens causing human asthma. A rationale of this study was to establish a model of ovine precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) for the in vitro measurement of airway responses in newborn and adult animals. We hyp...

Control of scrapie, an ovine transmissible spongiform encephalopathy or prion disorder, has been hampered by the lack of conventional antemortem diagnostic tests. Currently, scrapie is diagnosed by postmortem examination of the brain and lymphoid tissues for PrP(Sc), the protein marker for this group of disorders. For live, asymptomatic sheep, diagnosis using tonsil or third-eyelid lymphoid tis...

BACKGROUND Because transcatheter implantation of pulmonary valve is indicated for limited-size dysfunctional right ventricular outflow tract only as a balloon-expandable stent, we investigated the feasibility of a large-diameter self-expandable valved stent and the durability of the valve after >6 months. METHODS We made a nitinol-wire-based, self-expandable valved stent with leaflets made fr...

An experiment was carried out to compare the effect of feeding posidonia australis as a non-conventional feedstuff with cereal straw for sheep maintenance; and to compare seagrass/chicken litter with lucerne hay and pasture for sheep production on a scale such as would be applicable to lot-feeding of sheep in the area of suthern Australia in case of short term feed scarcity. To approach this ta...

This study was initiated to characterize urban and peri-urban sheep production systems and their economic importance in and around the towns of Debre Berhan and Dessie, Ethiopia. The study was undertaken using group discussions, structured questionnaire and personal observations. In both locations the majority of sheep producers were male household heads and predominantly traders in urban and f...

Many studies have reported temporal changes in the relative importance of density-dependence and environmental stochasticity in affecting population growth rates, but they typically assume that the predominant factor limiting growth remains constant over long periods of time. Stochastic switches in limiting factors that persist for multiple time-steps have received little attention, but most wi...