The European Union has implemented breeding programmes to increase scrapie resistance in sheep. A similar approach can be applied also in goats since the K222 allele provides a level of resistance equivalent to that of ARR in sheep. The European Food Safety Authority stated that breeding for resistance could be offered as an option for Member States to control classical scrapie in goats. We ass...

The present study reports the first isolation of Actinobacillus seminis from a goat in Brazil. A four-year-old Moxotó breeding goat in a flock of 70 goats and 65 sheep reared together in the county of Patos, semiarid region of Northeastern Brazil, showed clinical signs of unilateral orchitis and epididymitis. Diagnosis of A. seminis infection was confirmed by association of clinical findings, b...

ICAR Technical Series No 3 The development of the Dorper sheep and the Improved Boer Goat are undoubtedly two of the most successful long-term livestock programmes in South Africa. The Dorper is a composite mutton sheep breed developed through crossing an indigenous breed with a British mutton breed and the Improved Boer Goat was developed using a breeding strategy based largely on selection fo...

Dairy sheep may take advantages from all aspects of research conducted in the field of animal science and biology. There are, however, laboratories that specifically work in that field and have a direct objective of improvement of dairy sheep breeding. In the field of nutrition, an important body of work has been done in a collaborative EEC project involving France (INRA ; Barillet and Bocquier...

Research results and facts of indigenous sheep production were reviewed with the aim of delivering relevant information for the beneficiaries. The common production system used in Ethiopia was the extensive type, which was characterized by small flock sizes and the flock being periodically devastated by diseases. Some indigenous sheep groups of the country were characterized and their names wer...

The susceptibility of sheep to scrapie is under the control of the host's prion protein (PrP gene and is also influenced by the strain of the agent. PrP polymorphisms at codons 136 (A/V), 15 (R/H) and 171 (Q/R/H) are the main determinants of susceptibility/resistance of sheep to classical scrapie. They are combined in four main variants of the wild-type ARQ allele: VRQ, AHQ, ARH and ARR. Breedi...

The population structure and genetic diversity of 57 European and Middle Eastern marginal and cosmopolitan sheep breeds from 15 countries were analysed by typing 31 microsatellite markers. Mean unbiased expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.63 in British Exmoor Horn to 0.77 in Albanian Ruda. South-eastern European and Middle-Eastern sheep breeds were significantly more variable than northwest...

Phylogenetic relationships and genetic variation between two Iranian sheep breeds were analyzed using cytochrome b (cyt-b) gene sequences. The genomic DNA was isolated by salting out method and amplified cytochrome b gene using polymerase chain reaction restriction (PCR) method with a pair of primer. A partial sequence of cyt-b gene of Iranian sheep is 780 bp and contained 13 variable sites and...

Abstract Background Sheep milk is a nutritional and health-promoting food source for humans. The DEATH superfamily conserved protein family, some of its members are closely related to lactation. Systematic studies the important further understanding functions in mammary gland during lactation; however, there currently lacking. Results Herein, 74 were identified sheep, phylogenetic analyses indi...