Tag: December 2010

Genetic evaluation of hip score in UK Labrador Retrievers

Hip dysplasia is an important and complex genetic disease in dogs with both genetic and environmental influences. Since the osteoarthritis that develops is irreversible the only way to improve welfare, through reducing the prevalence, is through genetic selection. This study from the Kennel Club Genetics Centre at the Animal Health […]

Welfare issues in farm animal ophthalmology

In farm animal practice, there is often a clear tension between animal welfare and the economic basis of food animal production. Animal well-being is regularly compromised by the stringencies of intensive animal husbandry. Conditions such as infectious keratoconjunctivitis or ocular squamous cell carcinoma, while having negative effects on animal welfare, […]

Atypical scrapie/Nor98 in a sheep from New Zealand

In a consignment of sheep brains from NZ, to be used in Europe as negative control material in scrapie rapid screening test evaluations, brain samples from 1 sheep (no. 1512) gave the following initially confusing results in various screening tests: the brainstem repeatedly produced negative results in 2 very similar screening […]

Survey among Belgian pig producers about the introduction of group housing systems for gestating sows

There is a global move from individual to group housing of gestating sows. In the EU, individual gestating stalls will be banned by 2013. Just like in other industrialised regions, these stalls have been the standard housing system for intensively kept sows from the 1960s onward in the Flemish region […]