Tropical Africa contains almost one tenth of the world's sheep and over a quarter of its goats. Small ruminant production throughout this area takes place entirely under traditional systems, and since the meat produced is mostly for home consumption, a great deal of it escapes official marketing channels. As a result there is an undeniable lack of knowledge as to the part played by sheep and go...

Any producer contemplating the prospect of sheep dairying will face the problem of breeds: which breeds or what type of animals to purchase (or develop) in order to have the most economical commercial milk production? The problem is not an easy one to solve because there is not a single breed that combines all favorable traits. Some breeds are better than others in producing milk and others are...

Abstract The traditional system of producing small ruminants (sheep and goats) contributes significantly to the socioeconomic wellbeing farm households in northern Ghana. Besides serving as an important source income, sheep goats also offer non-pecuniary benefits such provision manure, savings, insurance, portfolio diversification, strong social relations. However, technical evaluation ruminant...

The study demonstrated that during the period of milking, the duration of the daylight had a significant effect on the lactation parameters in ewes lambed in January and June. Marked differences were noted in the levels of milk production in sheep, during the period of shortening daylight, i.e. in autumn, as the sheep lambed in June produced 50% less milk than ewes lambed in January. The dwindl...

the effect of honey, royal jelly and bee pollenon performance, immune system and blood factors of japanese quail, using 160 quail chicks in a completely randomized design by four treatments ]control (without additives), pollen powder 1 g/kg, royal jelly 125 ppm/l, honey 22 g/l) and four replicates of 10 chicks in each replication for 42 days. the experimental groups had no significant effect on...

We have studied the effect of two protein phosphatase inhibitors on thyrotropin (TSH)-stimulated triiodothyronine (T3) production by sheep thyroid cells grown in primary culture. Incubation of sheep thyrocytes with okadaic acid (OA) and calyculin-A (CL-A), two potent inhibitors of type 1 (PP1) and type 2A (PP2A) protein phosphatases, resulted in an increase of TSH-stimulated T3 production. This...

The present study was planned to carry out a seroprevalence study of PPR antibodies in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) including Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), using competitive-ELISA (c-ELISA) kit. A total of 4548 serum samples collected from 26 locations of the NWFP including. Eight hundred twenty eight samples were found positive for PPR antibodies yielding an overall seropr...

In this study, 130 Escherichia coli strains isolated from 306 cattle and sheep fecal samples were studied for their resistance to 10 antibiotics, verotoxin production, and hemolyzation. The antibiotic resistance rates of the E. coli strains were as follows: tetracycline, 51.6%; streptomycin, 24.2%; ampicillin, 13.1%; amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, 5.2%; gentamycin, 4.6%; ciprofloxacin, 4.6%; trim...

Genetic and phenotypic parameters were estimated for production and disease traits (including dagginess) from about 2 million pedigree-recorded animals born between 1990 and 2008 in New Zealand dual-purpose ram breeding flocks. This is the most comprehensive study of genetic parameter estimates for the New Zealand sheep industry to date and includes estimates that have not previously been repor...

Mountain areas are sensitive to changes in precipitation and temperature, which significantly impact traditional pastoralist communities, their economy, lifestyle. Alarming climate change scenarios justify the investigation of ecological socioeconomic vulnerabilities that characterize Portugal's mountain regions. This work explores how production systems small ruminants—sheep goats—could adapt ...