Sheep are a valuable resource for meat and wool production. During the dry summer, pastures are scarce and animals face Seasonal Weight Loss (SWL), which decreases production yields. The study of breeds tolerant to SWL is important to understand the physiological mechanisms of tolerance to nutritional scarcity, and define breeding strategies. Merino, Damara and Dorper sheep breeds have been des...

A study has been directed towards a better understanding how the Aseel, Kadaknath and White Leghorn immune system responds to multi-determinant antigen, sheep red blood cells. In contemporary commercial poultry production myriad of Viral and bacterial diseases being lingering menace to poultry industry and retort to prevent and control them are needed due to enormous production losses. Our rese...

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...

In developing countries, cross-breeding between local breeds and indigene or exotic breeds represents one of the main threats to the livestock diversity, leading to genetic dilution and loss of unique allelic combination underlying essential local adaptive traits. In this study, two Algerian sheep breeds, known to be highly admixed, were considered as a case study, to demonstrate how combinatio...

The influence of melatonin receptor 1A gene on litter size was studied in 150 ewes from Zel (n=100) and Naeini (n=50) sheep breeds. Two restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyses were done to determine all genotypes occurring by variations at MnlI and RsaI restriction sites. The M and C were the most frequent alleles in both of these breeds. The MM genotype was predominant in Zel ...

Background Helminths constitute one of the most important constraints to livestock production in the tropics. Widespread infection with internal parasites in grazing animals, associated production losses, costs of anthelmintics and death of infected animals are some of the major concerns. Current control methods focus on reducing contamination of pastures through anthelmintic treatment and/or c...

Myostatin (MSTN) is an inhibitor of skeletal muscle growth, and a mutation in the gene coding region leads to increased muscling. Calpastatin (CAST) is a specific inhibitor of the ubiquitous calcium-dependent proteases, µ-calpain and m-calpain, found in mammalian tissues. In this study, genomic DNA was extracted from Zandi sheep blood samples. Gel monitoring and spectrophotometer methods were u...