Dairy goat and sheep farms suffer severe economic losses due to intramammary infections, with Staphylococcus aureus representing the main cause of clinical mastitis in small ruminants. In addition, S. aureus contamination of goat and sheep milk may cause staphylococcal food poisoning, as many traditional caprine and ovine milk products are not subjected to pasteurization. Data on virulence and ...

Brucellosis being a global zoonotic disease and animal health problem most of the studies has been oriented towards bovine than small ruminants. Hence the present study is conducted to identify the biotype of predominant Brucella spp. in small ruminants for defined control and eradication strategies. The study was carried out by random collection of the vaginal swab, milk, blood samples from th...

Small ruminants are very important livestock species in the English-speaking Caribbean. Total populations for the Caribbean region are approximately 677,000 goats and 281,000 sheep. Although the primary purpose of sheep and goats is meat production for local consumption, the animals are also a source of emergency income. Production systems are generally characterised as small-scale and low-inpu...

This study describes a seroepidemiological survey on Rift Valley fever (RVF) among small ruminants and their close human contacts in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. A total of 500 small ruminants (126 local, 374 imported) were randomly selected from the sacrifice livestock yards of Al-Kaakiah slaughterhouse, in the holy city of Makkah, during the samples were collected from 100 local workers in close con...

The forage maturation hypothesis (FMH) states that energy intake for ungulates is maximised when biomass at intermediate levels. Nevertheless, metabolic allometry and different digestive systems suggest resource selection should vary across ungulate species. By combining GPS relocations with remotely sensed data on characteristics surface water, we quantified the effect of body size system in d...

Environmental stressors have, over generations, influenced the morphology, anatomy, behaviour, physiology, and genetic structure of small ruminants. The widespread dispersal ruminants vast geographical areas occurred along with human migration, thereby promoting adaptative process to different environmental conditions mainly through natural selection. Ongoing global warming prompted scientific ...

Following a request from the European Commission, a scientific opinion was prepared by EFSA‘s Animal Health and Welfare Panel to determine the magnitude, distribution, impact and significance of infection and disease in domestic ruminants and humans, risk factors for the maintenance (in domestic ruminant populations) and spillover (from these populations to humans) of Coxiella burnetii (the cau...

Babesiosis is a parasitic infection due to the multiplication of tick borne parasite, Babesia sp., in erythrocytes of host, which includes a wide variety of vertebrates including small ruminants causing decreased livestock output and hence economic losses. The objective of the present study was to establish a PCR based method for the detection of Babesia sp. in small ruminant population in Sout...

Small ruminant lentivirus (SRLV) is a group of viruses the Retroviridae family, shared between caprine, ovine and wild ruminants. It responsible for systemic infection that can affect lungs, central nervous system, mammary gland joints, causing chronic, insidious, progressive diseases, seriously affecting animal health. Concurrently, it associated with decrease in milk production, leading to ma...

Host factors are regarded as important in shaping the archaeal community in the rumen but few controlled studies have been performed to demonstrate this across host species under the same environmental conditions. A study was designed to investigate the structure of the methanogen community in the rumen of two indigenous (yak and Tibetan sheep) and two introduced domestic ruminant (cattle and c...