Classical scrapie is a naturally transmitted prion disease of sheep and goats. Contaminated environments may contribute to the spread of disease and evidence from animal models has implicated urine, blood, saliva, placenta and faeces as possible sources of the infection. Here we sought to determine whether sheep naturally infected with classical scrapie shed prions in their faeces. We used seri...

Seroprevalence rates of Toxoplasma gondii anti-antibodies in adult goats and sheep from different parts of Zimbabwe were determined. A total of 225 (67.9%) of the 335 serum samples tested were positive for anti-T. gondii IgG antibodies with the indirect fluorescent antibody test. There were differences in antibody seroprevalences among communal land goats from the different agro-ecological zone...

The efficacy of various combinations of anthelmintics against gastrointestinal nematodes in goats at an organized farm was determined using faecal egg count reduction test. Forty eight goats with eggs per gram of more than 150 were divided into four groups (groups I, II, III and IV) of 12 goats each. Groups I, II and III were administered fenbendazole+morantel, morantel+levamisole and levamisol...

Materials and Methods ― Fodder and fecal samples were collected from 3 groups of 3 goats, browsing ad lib on fresh leafy Quercus pubescens branches. The 3 groups were made up of: 3 dried-up animals without supplementation; 3 lactating animals, supplemented with a urea-molasses mixture, in a digestibility cage (Meuret, 1988); and 3 lactating animals compelled to eat a pure 0 pubescens die...

There is a paucity of literature characterizing response to varying levels of feed intake in goats. A controlled experiment was designed at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) with purebred goats, to measure feed intake, and its subsequent effects on growth of different goat genotypes when raised intensively. Two goat populations, the Spanish (SP) and the Tennessee Stiff-legged (TS) were fed th...

Two digestion trials, one with sheep and another with goats, were conducted to evaluate the long-term bias (LTB) of the indigestible dry matter (iDM), indigestible neutral detergent fiber (iNDF) and indigestible acid detergent fiber (iADF) internal markers. The study used eight Santa Inês castrated male sheep (average body weight of 16.6 kg) distributed in two 4×4 Latin squares and eight Saanen...

Foraging behaviours of the Damascus, Mamber and Boer goat breeds were compared on the South Carmel mountain ridge in Israel. Dietary choice was determined for a group of 10 or 11 yearling animals of each breed, housed and grazed separately to prevent social facilitation, during a total of 4 (Mamber) or 5 (Damascus and Boer) 4-day periods in the fall of 2004 and spring of 2005. The proportions o...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli was determined in goat and goat meat sold at retail outlets in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). METHODOLOGY A total of 644 samples, including 177 goat meat, 86 goat stomachs, 139 ready to eat (RTE) goat skewers, and 242 goat faecal samples were examined for the presence of Campylobacter jejuni and Cam...

2Ph.D. Candidate and Research Assistant, Animal Science Dept., University of California, Davis; Professor of Animal Science and Physiological Sciences, University of California, Davis; Associate Professor of Botany, University of California, Davis; and Research Leader, Production Systems, US Meat Animal Research Center, Clay Center, Nebraska. Abstract: Seasonal changes in utilization of one yea...

BACKGROUND Paratuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) is difficult to control due to a long phase of clinically non-apparent (latent) infection for which sensitive diagnostics are lacking. A defined animal model for this phase of the infection can help to investigate host-MAP interactions in apparently healthy animals and identify surrogate markers for disease ...