Introduction Merino ewes are the backbone of the Australian sheep industry and this is likely to be the case for some time. Stocking rate will remain a key profit driver in Merino enterprises and to maintain or improve profitability producers will need to continually adapt their production systems to deal with even larger changes in feed supply between seasons and years. The reproductive perfor...

involved in choosing appropriate criteria and procedures for problem~ ses of breed and mating system evaluation experiments in sheep are. nom lC ana iiterature is rev1ewed of expenments 1n Wh1Ch blOlog1cal or econom1C scn bed . has been investigated. The .range in relative economic merit from the lCl ency the best group in an expenment tYP1cally 1S from 100 to 120, w1th rest to 140 not uncommon...

In order to determine the status of the energy production system of the heart during cardiac failure of sheep with gousiekte, observations were made of the heart tissue levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), creatine phosphate (CrP), inorganic phosphate, reduced nicotine adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and lactate. Some measurements on oxidative phosphorylation were also made. A significant decrea...

The aim of this study was to assess the seasonal trend of the serum protein content of sheep and goats. The tested animals were six female goats (Maltese breed) and six female sheep (Valle del Belice breed). All animals were clinically healthy and not pregnant or lactating before or during the study. On blood samples, collected through an external jugular venipuncture every 30 days for 12 month...

A method for the primary stimulation and measurement of antibody production to sheep red blood cells in vitro has been described. In this system when mouse spleen cells are incubated with sheep erythrocytes large complement-dependent plaques are formed. The number and size of plaques increases from day 1 to day 3 of incubation with an average of 4.4 plaque areas per 1 x 10(6) cells plated at da...

Massese is an Italian sheep breed, with black or grey coat colour, mainly reared in the Tuscany and Emilia Romagna regions. Recently, the emerging interests in this breed have resulted in the production of Pecorino cheese obtained with only Massese milk. In order to be profitable, this marketing link between Massese breed and its products should be defended against fraudsters who could include ...

this study was evaluated some strategies and determined the suitable selection index for afshari sheep using simulated data. the relative importance of traits was determined based on the estimated economic values and consequently, the most benefit traits were applied to selection indexes construction. the interest indexes were different combination of traits including ewe body weight (ebw), ann...

Twelve adult Muzaffarnagari rams (mean weight 41.4 2.09) were used to study fasting heat production (FHP) using open circuit respiration calorimetry. After a maintenance level of feeding for 60, sheep were fasted for three days and later subjected to gaseous exchange studies for 72±96 h. Mean oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide and methane production (l/d) and urinary nitrogen excretion (g/d) va...

The foraging behaviour (grazing time and diet composition), live-weight (LW) changes and parasitic infection (faecal egg counts of gastrointestinal nematodes) of 12 beef cows, 84 ewes and 84 goats suckling their offspring, managed in mixed grazing on heathlands with 24% of improved pasture of perennial ryegrass-white clover, were studied during the years 2003 and 2006. The results showed that g...

In dairy cattle, quantitative trait nucleotides (QTNs) underlying quantitative trait loci (QTL) for milk production traits have been identified in bovine DGAT1, GHR and ABCG2 genes. The SPP1 gene has also been proposed to be a regulator of lactation. In sheep, QTL underlying milk production traits have been reported only recently, and no proven QTN has been identified. Taking into account the c...