This study investigated the effect of a short term (2 weeks) supplementary feeding on sexual behavior traits of Ile-de-France rams during late spring. Ten adult rams were fed a basal diet composed of 0.5 kg of straw, 0.8 kg of hay, 0.27 kg of barley, 0.05 kg of molasses and 0.01 kg of a mineral and vitamins supplement per day providing approximately the neat energy for maintenance according to ...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of melatonin implantation on basic testicular characteristics and reproductive performance of Kivircik and Charollais rams and ewes during the nonbreeding season. In this study, 8 Kivircik and 6 Charollais rams were used. Rams were implanted with 54 mg melatonin according to the manufacturer’s instructions. At melatonin implantation and at ram...

Chronic gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) administration is used where suppression of hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis activity is beneficial, such as steroid-dependent cancers, early onset gender dysphoria, central precocious puberty and as a reversible contraceptive in veterinary medicine. GnRH receptors, however, are expressed outside the reproductive axis, e.g. brain areas s...

Previous research has shown that the proportion of seasonal anoestrous ewes that ovulate in response to the introduction of rams ('ram effect') is dependent upon pheromonal and sexual behavioural stimuli emitted by the rams. Close contact with oestrous ewes is likely to increase the rams' libido and level of testosterone secretion, which in turn has been suggested to positively influence the pr...

The aim of this study was to determine whether advancing the seasonal changes associated with rams by treatment with exogenous melatonin and allowing the rams previous sexual experience would increase the proportion of anoestrous ewes ovulating in early July. North Country Mule ewes (n = 225) were grouped by live body weight and body condition score and allocated randomly to the following treat...

Thirteen Targhee rams selected for rate and efficiency of gain for 4 yr (1.5 generations) were compared with 10 rams from a Targhee line with no selection for over 20 yr to determine if selection for these traits would be associated with changes in the secretion of growth hormone (GH), thyrotropin (TSH) and(or) prolactin (PRL). Selected rams exhibited greater birth weight, average daily gain (A...

Five Chios and five Friesian rams were used to study the effect of season on semen production. Semen samples were collected with an artificial vagina. In spite of the large variation of most of the semen characteristics among rams of the two breeds, seasonal variation in semen quantity (volume, concentration and total number of spermatozoa per ejaculate) and quality (percentage of motile sperma...

The Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS) is a marine species database that manages an authoritative taxonomic list of species occurring in the Southern Ocean. RAMS links with several other initiatives managing biogeographic or genomics information. The current paper aims to briefly present RAMS and provides an updated snapshot of its contents, in the form of a DarwinCore checklist (avail...

We evaluated sexual behavior of St. Croix White (SC; n = 5) and Barbados Blackbelly hair (BB; n = 4) rams under two environmental conditions in the tropics. Sexually naive rams were individually exposed for 15 min to a restrained, ovariectomized ewe, three times during a 3-wk period in June, in a pen with shade (SHADE; 33.1+/-.3 degrees C) or without shade (SUN; 38.3+/-.3 degrees C). Rectal tem...

Fifty-three years of the NCEP–NCAR Reanalysis I are dynamically downscaled using the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) to generate a regional climate model (RCM) climatology of the contiguous United States and Mexico. Data from the RAMS simulations are compared to the recently released North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), as well as observed precipitation and temperature data. T...