Sheep from 4 Merino flocks, different in annual clean fleece production when grazed together, were given several nutritional treatments to compare the relationships of wool sulphur with nutrient intake, and with wool growth and plasma cystine. The sheep were selected from a finewool (Fl), a strong wool (S), and 2 medium-Peppin (MP6 and MPlO) flocks. The nutritional treatments varied intakes of ...

BACKGROUND Wool quality is one of the most important economic traits in sheep. The wool fiber is derived from specialized skin cells that are referred to as wool follicles. To understand the roles of microRNAs (miRNAs) in wool fiber growth, we detected the expression patterns of miRNAs in wool follicles at the anagen, catagen, and telogen stages from Tibetan sheep through Solexa sequencing. R...

Natural dyes gained increasing attention due to environmental considerations. Many of the dye plants have also medicinal values. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of 25 plants as dyes and their dyed wool yarns against microorganisms. Prokaryotes were found to be more sensitive to dye extracts than eukaryotic microorganisms and dyestuff from Punica granatum, Berberis vulgaris, Agrimoni...

The desmoglein 4 (DSG4) gene is a potential candidate in the search for genes that may affect wool traits, because of its function. This study aimed to screen for polymorphisms in partial exon 16 and 3ꞌUTR of the sheep desmoglein 4 DSG4 gene, and to test its possible association with wool length and crimp associated with fur. Overall, 326 sheep were scanned via single-strand conformational poly...

Wool fibres have been chemically modified by reduction I chlorination under acidic pH Ipre-swelling in conc. formic acid prior to their dyeing with indigenous reactive dyes of different molecular configurations to enhance the reactive dye uptake on wool fibre substrate. The pretreatment processes are inexpensive, less harmful and less time consuming as against the use of imported special wool r...

background: little is understood about the regulation of gene expression during early goat embryo development. this study investigated the expression profile of 19 genes, known to be critical for early embryo development in mouse and human, at five different stages of goat in vitro embryo development (oocyte, 8-16 cell, morula, day-7 blastocyst, and day 14 blastocyst). materials and methods: st...

induced abortion may be desired during a normal or abnormal pregnancy. the methods of induced abortion differ between species mainly because of different sources for progesterone production during pregnancy between species and within a species according to different stages of gestation. in cows and buffaloes, pregnancy can be effectively terminated from 5 to 150 days by administration of luteol...

We investigate the origin of archaeological wool textiles preserved by anoxic waterlogging from seven medieval archaeological deposits in north-western Europe (c. 700-1600 AD), using geospatial patterning in carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N) and non-exchangeable hydrogen (δ2H) composition of modern and ancient sheep proteins. δ13C, δ15N and δ2H values from archaeological wool keratin (n = 83) and ...

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...

The effects of maternal nutrition on offspring wool production (quality and quantity) were evaluated. Primiparous Rambouillet ewes (n = 84) were randomly allocated to 1 of 6 treatments in a 2 × 3 factorial design. Selenium treatment [adequate Se (ASe, 9.5 μg/kg of BW) vs. high Se (HSe, 81.8 μg/kg of BW)] was initiated at breeding, and maternal nutritional intake [control (CON, 100% of requireme...