The average twin lambing rate of Bayanbulak sheep is 2% to 3%. However, a flock of sheep with a close genetic relationship and an average of 2 to 3 lambs per birth has been found recently. To determine the major genes controlling the prolificacy of the flock in the present study, the flock was designated A while 100 normal Bayanbulak sheep were randomly selected to comprise the control flock B....

Because of the confounding effects of long incubation duration and flock management, accurate epidemiological studies of scrapie outbreaks are difficult to carry out. In this study, 641 Manech red-faced sheep from six scrapie-affected field flocks in Pyrénées Atlantiques, France, were monitored for clinical scrapie over a 6-9 year period. Over this period, 170 scrapie clinical cases were record...

  Avian Leukosis Virus Subgroup-J (ALV-J). Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) and MycopJasma synviae (MS) are important pathogens in chickens that cause severe economical losses in poultry industry throughout the world. Seven broiler grandparent flocks of Iran (six broiler strains) were sampled randomly at the ages of 8-63 wk (100 samples from each flock) for antibody detection to ALV-J, MG, and MS ...

The aim of this study was to provide information on the molecular characteristic and the phylogenic relationship of infectious bronchitis viruses (IBV) strains in Bushehr province in comparison to other strains reported in the Middle East. Samples were collected from broiler flocks in Bushehr province during 2014 - 2015. These flocks had respiratory problems such as gasping, sneezing and bronch...

Maedi-Visna Virus (MVV) seroprevalence and its relationship with housing and mode of rearing of replacement ewe-lambs was investigated in 38 non-randomly selected sheep-flocks in Spain. They included extensive lamb-producing Manchega cross-bred flocks raised almost permanently at pasture, semi-intensive Latxa dairy flocks housed 2-8 months/year and intensively raised Assaf dairy flocks housed m...

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...

A comparative study of the Rose Bengal test (RBT), Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) and complement fixation test (CFT) was performed to analyze sera of two Awassi flocks. Flock A was composed of 215 ewes, naturally infected with brucellosis. None of the animals were vaccinated. Flock B consisted of 336 non-infected non-vaccinated ewes. These served as negative controls. The two flocks ...

A cross-sectional study was carried out to identify risk factors for Salmonella spp. contamination in French laying hen flocks at the end of the laying period. Five hundred and nineteen flocks were studied between October 2004 and September 2005. The Salmonella status of the flocks was assessed from 5 faeces samples (pooled faeces samples from cage flocks and foot swabs from flocks kept on the ...

This paper proposes that the flocking behavior of birds can guide the design of a robust, scalable and self-adaptive congestion control protocol in the context of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The proposed approach adopts a swarm intelligence paradigm inspired by the collective behavior of bird flocks. The main idea is to ‘guide’ packets (birds) to form flocks and flow towards the sink (glob...

This cross-sectional study was conducted to estimate seroprevalence and to identify flock-level factors associated with seropositivity to brucellosis in small ruminants in Kerman province, southeastern Iran. In October-November 2011, serum samples were randomly collected from 1767 sheep and 1233 goats, older than 18 months, from 300 flocks. The sera were initially screened for the presence of a...