Background The presence of different missense mutations in sheep breeds have shown that the bone morphogenetic protein receptor 1B (BMPR1B), bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP15) and growth differentiation factor 9 (GDF9) genes play a vital role in ovulation rate and prolificacy in ewes. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate BMPR1B, BMP15 and GDF9 gene mutations in prolific ewes of I...

Bakhtiari et al recently proposed a fast message authentica-tion primitive called KHF. This paper shows that KHF is highly vulnerable to diierential cryptanalysis: it can be broken with about 37 chosen message queries. This suggests that the KHF design should be reconsidered .

A new species of Gaeolaelaps (Acari, Mesostigmata, Laelapidae) is described based on morphological characters of adult females collected from nest of Formica sp. (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the Shahrekord Region, Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari province, Iran. A key for the identification of species of Gaeolaelaps with short peritremes is presented.

As I read the study by Bakhtiari et al. (1), I noticed that they miscalculated the positive predictive value. They indicated that the positive predictive value of the PCR assay was 100%. But when I placed the values on the table and calculated the positive predictive value of the PCR assay, I found it 83.3%.

Merino ewes (n 108) joined to a single sire were allocated into three flocks, with ewes in one flock being chemically defaunated in the second month of gestation. Single lambs born to defaunated ewes (BF lambs) were heavier at birth and at weaning than lambs born to faunated ewes (F lambs). After weaning, all BF and F lambs were individually housed then half of the F lambs were chemically defau...

Weaned Targhee x Hampshire lambs (average BW 27.6 kg) were used to determine the effects of concentrate feeding, forage grazing, or finishing on concentrate after grazing upon growth and carcass tissue accretion. Lambs were assigned randomly and balanced by weight and sex to five replicated treatments (12 lambs/treatment): all-concentrate in drylot (DL); rotational grazing alfalfa (ALF); rotati...

Thirty-two Afshari lambs were used in a completely randomized design with a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments to evaluate a nutritional supplement designed to provide multiple gluconeogenic precursors during heat stress (HS). Lambs were housed in thermal neutral (TN) conditions and fed ad libitum for 8 d to obtain covariate data (period 1 [P1]) for the subsequent experimental period (pe...

A study was conducted to evaluate the relative resistance to a natural or induced gastrointestinal (GI) nematode infection in hair and wool breeds of lambs. In Experiment 1, natural GI nematode infection was evaluated among fall born Dorper crossbred (DO; n = 17) or St. Croix (SC; n = 17) lambs. Ewe and wether lambs were weaned at 84 ± 1.1 days of age and dewormed. Fecal egg counts (FECs) and b...

Carcasses of Churro Galego Bragançano purebred and Suffolk and Merino Precoce crossbred lambs reared under three different conventional production system of northeast of Portugal were evaluated. Carcasses of male lambs had larger muscle longissimus width (P < 0.05) and smaller subcutaneous fat thickness (P < 0.05) than the female lambs. Carcasses of crossbred lambs had higher (P < 0.05) compact...