The South African Angora goat industry makes the largest contribution to global mohair production. Mohair is a luxury fibre and production of a high quality clip is essential. For many years genetic improvement of Angoras in South Africa was based on quantitative selection. Genome mapping efforts provided new avenues for improvement and a quantitative trait loci (QTL) study was initiated to ide...

Brucella melitensis is the cause of brucellosis in sheep and goats, which often results in abortion. Few cases of B. melitensis infection in goats have occurred in the United States over the last 25 years. However, vigilance must be maintained, as it is for the bovine milk industry, to ensure that brucellosis is not introduced into the U.S. goat population. The objective of this study was to de...

A survey (n=276) was carried out to gather information on goat farming systems in three districts in the Southern province of Sri Lanka. The objective was to identify the prospects and constrains to improve the economic productivity of the herds. Goats were ranked highest in population and second in terms of importance to the house hold. Buddhists were dominated in goat rearing while selling of...

Antibody detection-based tests for paratuberculosis offer speed and economy, 2 diagnostic test attributes important to animal industries with narrow profit margins. Application of such tests to individual milk samples instead of serum samples can further improve testing efficiency and decrease testing cost. Accuracy of a commercial bovine paratuberculosis enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELIS...

Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (M. ap) is the causative agent of paratuberculosis or Johne's disease (JD) in herbivores with potential involvement in cases of Crohn's disease in humans. JD is spread worldwide and is economically important for both beef and dairy industries. Generally, pathogenic ovine strains (M. ap-S) are mainly found in sheep while bovine strains (M. ap-C) in...

With Regulation EC 853/04, the European Parliament and the Council laid down general rules for food business operators regarding the hygiene of foodstuffs. In particular, the regulation established ≤1.500.000 cfu/mL as the maximum-tolerated value for total bacterial count in raw goat milk. Moreover, in order to enhance the hygiene of dairy farms, the Sardinia Region has funded the F measure pro...

Many of the chronic infectious disease problems in the goat herd are lifelong infections from exposure of kids near the time of birth. Infectious disease control programs start with planning kid-rearing strategies to minimize infection of the neonate. Pasteurized rearing strategies are commonly used to prevent mycoplasmosis and caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus (CAEV), however pasteurized re...

A comparative study of the indirect haemagglutination (IHA), immunofluorescence (IFAT) and immunoenzymatic (ELISA) tests was carried out to determine the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii antibodies in goats. One hundred seventy-four serum samples were obtained from four goat herds from the region of Uberlândia, State of Minas Gerais. The distribution of the animals, according to their origin, wa...