The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread pastoralism sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published ZooMS reference datasets, identify domesticates wild Iron Age ...

Field-collected ticks were used to infect goats with either Ap-ha, a strain associated with human disease, or a variant strain, Ap-Variant 1, of Anaplasma phagocytophilum. Goats were shown to be competent as a reservoir for Ap-Variant 1, and challenge and immunosuppression studies were used to further examine infection in the goat model.

Heat shock protein 70 (HSP 70) plays a vital role by bestowing cytoprotection against diverse kinds of stresses. The ubiquitous HSP 70 proteins are the most abundant and temperature sensitive among all the HSPs. The present paper has characterized HSP70-1 cDNA in goat (Capra hircus). Total RNA isolated from goat peripheral blood mononuclear cells was reverse transcribed to cDNA that was used fo...

Feral goats were lot-fed for either 7 or 14 days before a simulated shipping voyage of 20 days, to examine whether period of lot-feeding affected the proportion of goats that ate pelleted feed and the subsequent liveweight changes. During the period from the start of lot-feeding to the completion of the simulated voyage, liveweight losses were similar and underestimated true losses because of t...

Tissue samples comprising the oesophagus and diaphragm were collected from 400 sheep and 400 goats slaughtered at the abattoirs in the study area. Out of this number, 36 were positive for Sarcocystis cysts (sarcocysts) in sheep and 56 in goats. The sarcocysts in sheep measured 35.7 to 500 microns lengthwise and the cyst-wall 2.4 microns. They were identified to be Sarcocystis tenella. The cysts...

The seasonal occurrence of coccidial oocysts was determined in a mixed herd of indigenous goats and cross-bred sheep at Nebo, Northern Province, South Africa. The herd of c. 30 sheep was housed with c. 70 goats in 1 camp. Over a period of 14 months, 114 faecal specimens were collected from sheep and 369 from goats and the number of oocysts per gram of faeces (OPG) determined. The mean OPG value...