Facial eczema (FE) is a disease of grazing ruminants causedbyingestingsporesofthefungusPithomyces chartarum. The spores contain a toxic compound, sporidesmin, which causes liver injury, sensitivity to sunlight andreduced performance in susceptible dairy cattle. The extent of production losses is summarised. Research at Ruakura has demonstrated that the resistance of animals to FE is inherited, ...

BACKGROUND Cow's milk proteins are amongst the most common causes of food allergy in infants, and caseins are probably the main allergens. The existence of a high degree of cross-reactivity between milk caseins from different animals has been reported. We describe a 2-year-old boy who experienced allergic reactions after eating and touching sheep's cheese, but who tolerated cow's milk and cow's...

This study was carried out to determine the presence and frequency of Anaplasma ovis and Anaplasma marginale in sheep and dairy cattle in West-Azerbaijan province, Iran. A total number of 200 blood samples were randomly collected via the jugular vein from apparently healthy cattle (100) and sheep (100). The extracted DNA from blood cells was screened using genus-specific (Anaplasma spp.) nested...

Sheep and goat breeds are selected worldwide for meat, wool, and dairy production, and breeding objectives also include other functional traits such as reproductive performance and disease resistance. In early 2007, the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) allowed de novo sequencing of sheep (Jiang et al., 2014) and goat genomes (Dong et al., 2013). In turn, it offered an opportunity...

In order to fulfil the seroprevalence gap on Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis infection in ovine dairy farms of Marche region (central Italy), a stratified study was carried out on 2086 adult female sheep randomly chosen from 38 herds selected in Ancona and Macerata provinces. 73.7% flocks resulted infected by a commercial ELISA test (Pourquier, France), with a mean seroprevalence of...

BACKGROUND Source identification in areas with outbreaks of airborne pathogens is often time-consuming and expensive. We developed a model to identify the most likely location of sources of airborne pathogens. METHODS As a case study, we retrospectively analyzed three Q fever outbreaks in the Netherlands in 2009, each with suspected exposure from a single large dairy goat farm. Model input co...

The purpose of this commentary is to highlight the anti-inflammatory properties of polar lipids present in ovine and caprine milk and its derivatives (i.e. dairy products such as yogurt and cheese). These lipids inhibit the onset of atherosclerosis and thus promote cardiovascular health. We suggest that further research could focus on the elucidation and bioavailability of these lipids.

Animal species identification of milk and dairy products has received increasing attention concerning food composition, traceability, allergic pathologies and accurate consumer information. Here we sought to develop an easy to use and robust method for species identification in cheese with emphasis on an authenticity control of PDO Feta cheese products. We used specific mitochondrial DNA region...

Dairy animals have a significant role in every country’s agricultural economy. Livestock is the major sub-sector of industry and value dairy products increasing globally. Under pathological circumstances heat shock proteins (HSPs) promote protein repair, folding, refolding misfolded peptides, possible breakdown irreparable proteins. Heat 27 (HSP27) member small family (sHSPs) also called HSPB1....

Strains of coagulase negative staphylococci (CNS) are the main bacteria species causing infection of the mammary gland in dairy cows, goats and sheep (Silanikove et al., 2014a). Recently, Tomazi et al. (2015) published a paper showing that apart from a modest increase in somatic cell count, infection with CNS had no effect on milk yield and milk composition of the infected glands in comparison ...