Forage halophytes such as saltbush (Atriplex spp.) are widely used to revegetate Australian saline land and can provide a medium-quality fodder source. An animal house experiment was conducted to investigate differences in the carcass and eating quality of sheep ingesting saltbush from saline land in combination with a barley supplement. Twenty-six merino hoggets (two groups of 13) were fed eit...

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) strains possessing genes for enterohemolysin (ehxA) and/or intimin (eae), referred to here as complex STEC (cSTEC), are more commonly recovered from the feces of humans with hemolytic uremic syndrome and hemorrhagic colitis than STEC strains that do not possess these accessory virulence genes. Ruminants, particularly cattle and sheep, are recognized...

The reproductive efficiency of the entire sheep flock could be improved if ewe lambs go through puberty early and produce their first lamb at 1 year of age. The onset of puberty is linked to the attainment of critical body mass, and therefore we tested whether it would be influenced by genetic selection for growth rate or for rate of accumulation of muscle or fat. We studied 136 Merino ewe lamb...

Real-time ultrasound measurements (Falco 100 device, linear probe 3.5 MHz) were used to estimate in vivo carcass composition of Hungarian Merino (n=9) and British Milksheep (n=10) ram-lambs. Animals aged 110-120 days and were growing 29.73+/-1.11 kg and 28.98+/--0.95 kg, resp. There were little between-breed differences in the ultrasound records for subcutaneous fat thickness (0.33+/-0.10 cm; 0...

Food Science Australia has been developing sensing systems that are suitable for use in automating tasks commonly seen in Australian meat processing plants. This paper discusses the process of automating the sheep brisket cutting task. The prototype automated system was defined and developed and a standard manual brisket cutter was adapted to an ABB industrial robot for demonstration to industr...