For ruminants, the microbial population existing in the rumen breaks down feed ingredients offered to the animal. This population must be healthy and viable to permit maximum utilization of feed ingredients. Because ruminants evolved mainly as forage feeders, factors that disrupt population of cellulolytic microorganisms will result in reduced utilization of nutrients -primarily, energy and pro...

Herbivores that digest plant material in the fore-stomach can be divided in ruminants and non-ruminants. This study describes the distribution of feed particles (and inorganic material) and dry matter (DM) in the digestive tract of non-ruminant foregut fermenters. Results from passage trials led us to hypothesize that specific particle-sorting mechanisms, as observed in ruminants, are unlikely ...

Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is a highly contagious disease of small ruminants caused by the Morbillivirus peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV). Two recombinant replication-defective human adenoviruses serotype 5 (Ad5) expressing either the highly immunogenic fusion protein (F) or hemagglutinin protein (H) from PPRV were used to vaccinate sheep by intramuscular inoculation. Both recombin...

Chlamydophila pecorum found in the intestine and vaginal mucus of asymptomatic ruminants has also been associated with different pathological conditions in ruminants, swine and koalas. Some endangered species such as water buffalos and bandicoots have also been found to be infected by C. pecorum. The persistence of C. pecorum strains in the intestine and vaginal mucus of ruminants could cause l...

Bradley J. Johnson, Ph.D. Texas Tech University Department of Animal and Food Sciences [email protected] I.β-Adrenergic Agonist-Stimulated Muscle Hypertrophy One of the most pronounced effects of feeding a β2-adrenergic agonist to ruminants is the preferential increase in skeletal muscle mass and/or cross-sectional area of individual muscles. Examples of these skeletal muscle-enhancing ch...

It appears that ruminants such as cattle and sheep evolved as forage consumers. Plant cell walls, which we measure as fiber, cannot be digested by animals, but must be fermented by microorganisms. Fermentative digestion of fiber is slow and incomplete, and ruminants have developed many attributes that result in efficient digestion. They swallow large particles of forage and selectively retain t...

Q fever is a zoonosis caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii. One of the largest reported outbreaks of Q fever in humans occurred in the Netherlands starting in 2007; epidemiologic investigations identified small ruminants as the source. To determine the genetic background of C. burnetii in domestic ruminants responsible for the human Q fever outbreak, we genotyped 126 C. burnetii-positive s...

Quantitative data on digestive anatomy of the world's largest ruminant, the giraffe, are scarce. Data were collected from a total of 25 wild-caught and 13 zoo-housed giraffes. Anatomical measures were quantified by dimension, area or weight and analysed by allometric regression. The majority of measures scaled positively and isometrically to body mass. Giraffes had lower tissue weight of all st...

Two independent cDNA clones, identified as representing the mRNA of the nucleocapsid protein gene of peste-des-petits-ruminants virus, were sequenced. The longest insert was 1662 nucleotides, not counting the poly(A) tail, and it was estimated that about 21 nucleotides were missing from the complete gene sequence. The sequence contained one long open reading frame encoding a protein of 525 amin...

Following a request from the European Commission, a scientific opinion was prepared by EFSA‘s Animal Health and Welfare Panel to determine the magnitude, distribution, impact and significance of infection and disease in domestic ruminants and humans, risk factors for the maintenance (in domestic ruminant populations) and spillover (from these populations to humans) of Coxiella burnetii (the cau...