Awareness of pain and its effects is increasing within the veterinary profession, but pain management in food animals has been neglected. Sheep seldom receive analgesics despite various conditions, husbandry practice and experimental procedures being known to be painful, eg footrot, mastitis, vaginal prolapse, castration, vasectomy, penis deviation, and laparoscopy. The […]
Accumulation of ammonia and other potentially noxious gases on live export shipments from Australia to the Middle East
Noxious gases on ships are irritant pollutants that have potential impacts on the comfort and health of both livestock and humans. Identification of environmental influences on the pollutants will assist live exporters to control them. Ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, as well as wet and dry bulb temperature, dew […]
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 […]
A genomics-informed, SNP association study reveals FBLN1 and FABP4 as contributing to resistance to fleece rot in Australian Merino sheep
BACKGROUND: Fleece rot (FR) and body-strike of Merino sheep by the sheep blowfly Lucilia cuprina are major problems for the Australian wool industry, causing significant losses as a result of increased management costs coupled with reduced wool productivity and quality. In addition to direct effects on fleece quality, fleece rot […]