Sheep fed on either a low (500 g lucern (Medicago sativa) chaff/d; L) or high (1100 g lucerne chaff/d; H) intake had measurements made, using arterio-venous techniques, of blood flow and energy metabolite and cysteine utilization in the skin. Sheep on the H intake had significantly increased skin blood flow (P = 0.014) and oxygen uptake (P = 0.05). Although the H sheep had higher skin blood flo...

The ability of sheep wool to remove Pb(II) ions and safranin dye from aqueous solutions through the adsorption process was investigated at room temperature. The metal ions concentration was determined by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometer method. The influence of pH, contact time, amount of adsorbent, temperature and initial metal...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of Spirulina supplementation, sire breed and sex on the wool characteristics of purebred and crossbred Merino weaned lambs under a single pasture-based management system. Lambs sired by Merino, White Suffolk, Dorset, Black Suffolk breeds were randomly allocated into 3 treatments – the control group grazing without Spirulina (0 mL), low (100...

The importance of sheep's wool in making textiles has inspired extensive research into its structure and the underlying genetics since the 1960s. Wool keratin-associated proteins (KAPs) are a key structural component of the wool fibre. The characterisation of the genes encoding these proteins has progressed rapidly with advances in the nucleotide and protein sequencing. This review describes ou...

The melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene has been described as responsible for the black color in some breeds of sheep, but little is known about its function in many colored breeds, particularly those with a wide range of pigmentation phenotypes. The Brazilian Creole is a local breed of sheep from southern Brazil that has a wide variety of wool colors. We examined the MC1R gene (Extension locus...

Genetic parameters for Columbia, Polypay, Rambouillet, and Targhee sheep were estimated using REML with animal models for prolificacy, weight, and wool traits. All bivariate analyses included a covariance between additive genetic effects for the two traits plus appropriate additional covariances. Number of observations by breed ranged from 5,140 to 7,095 for prolificacy traits, from 7,750 to 9,...

ABSTRACT: Sheep production is expanding among small farmers in Southern Uruguay. Currently, Corriedale and Milchschaf are being used, but not Highlander. However, there lack of experimental information regarding the relative performance these breeds. We conducted an experiment where three sheep breeds were run together at Regional Centre, located region question. Wool, body, reproductive lamb g...

Lumpy wool (dermatophilosis) develops following prolonged wetting of sheep when bacterial proliferation in and on skin induce an exudative dermatitis, causing a superficial lesion damage to follicles fibres. The incidence dermatophilosis is strongly dependent wet warm weather and, hence, infection sporadic. While older animals are less at risk than lambs, it unclear whether this reflects natura...

In recent years considerable information on ovine foetal growth has emanated from both medical research, in which the sheep has been used as a convenient experimental animal, and agricultural research, in which the main interest has been in improving the efficiency of the sheep as a meat and wool producer (Alexander, 1974). In the present paper an attempt is made to draw together some of the ma...

The hypothesis that infrequent feeding of sheep supports a higher rate of wool growth than frequent (daily) feeding was examined using oats grain and three roughages of varying protein content. The wool growth of Merino ewes fed every third and sixth day was significantly greater than that of similar ewes fed every day, when averaged over the four diets. Increased wool production due to infrequ...