Hu sheep lambskin comes from a specific breed of sheep of China. Hu sheep are considered a protected breed by the Chinese government. The hair follicles of these sheep have three types of waves, large, medium, and small. There are only few histological reports of Hu sheep lambskin, and there are no modern molecular or biological studies, so the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of h...

a crossbreeding experiment involving four iranian fat-tailed sheep breeds, namely kurdi (k), chaal (c), afshari (a) and sanjabi (s) was carried out to determine the ram breed effects on productivity of kurdi fat-tailed ewes (k) under extensive production system. a total of 475 kurdi ewes were mated to 24 rams from four breeds producing 454 lambs including pure kurdi, kk, (116 lambs), afshari × ...

Twenty-seven sheep of the four most common Swiss breeds and the English breed Poll Dorset were experimentally infected with a northern European field strain of bluetongue virus serotype 8 (BTV-8). Animals of all breeds developed clinical signs, viremia and pathological lesions, demonstrating that BTV-8 is fully capable of replicating and inducing bluetongue disease (BT) in the investigated shee...

The number of lambs sold per ewe mated in the breeding flock has a considerable impact on sheep operation profitability. This depends primarily on fertility, prolificacy (# of lambs), and lamb survival, mothering ability, milk production of the ewe and lamb growth rate. Optimal reproduction does vary by environment and management system – some sheep operations don’t want a lambing rate over 200...

The families of TGF-β proteins are the most important growth factors in the ovary for growth and differentiation of early ovarian follicles. Three related oocyte-derived members of the transforming growth factor-β superfamily namely growth differentiation factor 9 (GDF9), BMP15 and BMPR-IB have been shown to be essential for follicular growth and ovulation. Different mutations in the GDF9 gene ...

The present study was performed to evaluate the on-station growth performance of local and Dorper × local crossbred sheep in eastern Amhara region, Ethiopia. Data on 302 lambs collected over a 4-year period (2009 to 2012) on local and Dorper × local crossbred sheep at Sirinka breeding, evaluation and distribution site were used in this study. Fixed effects considered were breed, lamb sex, birth...

background and aims: akabane disease causes epidemics of abortions, stillbirths and congenital malformations manifested as arthrogryposis and hydranencephaly or microanencephaly in sheep, goats and cattle. akabane virus replicates in arthropods and is transmitted by either mosquitoes or midges. outbreaks of the akabane virus have been reported from many countries in southeast asia, middle east,...

Background: Reference values are very important in clinical management of diseased animal. The mutton quality characteristics not only could reflect the breed of sheep, but also allow for a selection of improved meat quality in the breed analyzed with more attractive sensory attributes. The aim of this study was to establish reference values for commonly used hematologic and biochemical paramet...

Domestication and the subsequent selection of animals for either economic or morphological features can leave a variety of imprints on the genome of a population. Genomic regions subjected to high selective pressures often show reduced genetic diversity and frequent runs of homozygosity (ROH). Therefore, the objective of the present study was to use 42,182 autosomal SNPs to identify genomic reg...