However a handful of states still allow the wastewater to be used for watering cattle sprayed onto roads for dust control
and Guan Feng Wang who are postdoctoral researchers at NC State. Vijay Vontimitta a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue working in a group headed by Guri Johal is also a first author.
#Piglet health: A better understanding of the immune response to intestinal parasitesparasitologists from the University of Veterinary medicine of Vienna are closer to understanding the disease process behind porcine neonatal coccidiosis.
The disease affects piglets during the first days of their life and can cause heavy diarrhea in the animals.
The parasite Cystoisospora suis damages the intestinal mucosa to such a degree that it threatens the growth and survival of the pigs.
Porcine neonatal coccidiosis is a serious parasitic infection of young piglets that severely damages the intestinal mucosa leading to diarrhea and reduced nutritional intake.
and because secondary infections can result in increased mortality the disease is responsible for substantial economic losses at affected pig farms.
The developing immune system of neonatal piglets is not yet mature enough to deal with the parasites.
By comparison Cystoisospora suisis absolutely harmless for adult pigs and their mature immune systems explains first author Simone Gabner.
Immune cells grow more quickly in the intestines of infected piglets than in healthy onesscientists from the Institute of Parasitology at the Vetmeduni Vienna investigated how the developing immune system of piglets responds to an infection with Cystoisospora suis.
and activates the immune system were found in infected piglets as early as four days after infection.
Both types of T cells were detected significantly earlier in infected piglets than in non-infected animals.
In healthy piglets the T cells begin to settle in the intestine from about the third week of life.
Innate immune system activatedgabner and her colleagues also researched various receptors of the innate immune system in the piglets as well as signalling substances
Mother's milk a source of protectionprevious studies by the research group showed that protective antibodies against porcine neonatal coccidiosis are transferred to the piglets through the sow's milk directly after birth.
Sows that had been exposed to the pathogen produced the respective antibodies from which the piglets could then benefit.
In a follow-up study the researchers went one step further. They deliberately infected sows with the parasites during gestation in order to increase the antibody levels in the maternal animals.
The aim was to supply the piglets with as many antibodies from the mother's milk during their first days of life as possible.
This milk vaccination was a success. The piglets of infected sows exhibited a less severe development of the disease than piglets of non-infected sows.
The more antibodies a sow transferred to its piglets the weaker the symptoms exhibited by the piglets.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Veterinã¤rmedizinische Universitã¤t Wien. Note:
it's not livestock that's primarily on the menu--it is man's best friend.
Livestock despite being made more abundant up a relatively small portion of the leopard's diet.
Domestic goats for example are seven times more common than dogs in this landscape yet only make up 11 percent of leopard's prey.
because goats are less accessible and often brought into pens at night while dogs are allowed largely to wander freely.
Cows sheep and pigs were eaten also but collectively made up less than 20 percent of leopard's food.
Most domestic cattle in this region are too large to be preyed on by leopards. The author's of the study say that the selection of domestic dogs as prey means that the economic impact of predation by leopards on valuable livestock is expected lower than.
Thus human-leopard conflict is more likely to be related to people's fears of leopards foraging in the proximity of their houses and the sentimental value of dogs as pets.
An Analysis of the Extent and Nature of Illegality in Forest Conversion for Agriculture 90%of the deforestation in Brazil from 2000 to 2012 was illegal primarily due to the failure to conserve a percentage of natural forests in large-scale cattle
while other species may prefer birds dogs sheep etc. However Pitts argues that these insects are opportunists rather than true specialists.
and domestic animals (dogs and pigs) rest below found that only 20 percent of the A. gambiae females contained human blood while the rest contained animal blood.
#Combining antibodies, iron nanoparticles and magnets steers stem cells to injured organsresearchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute infused antibody-studded iron nanoparticles into the bloodstream to treat
while grazing livestock degrade habitat. One-third of all U s. federally endangered birds are Hawaiian species
The report identifies 33 species like the northern bobwhite quail grasshopper sparrow and bank swallow that do not meet the Watch List criteria
and termites) and about 60%comes from human activities like cattle breeding rice agriculture fossil fuel exploitation landfills and biomass burning.
with human-sized pig kidneys the scientists developed the most successful method to date to keep blood vessels in the new organs open
In our proof-of-concept study the vessels in a human-sized pig kidney remained open during a four-hour testing period.
The current research is part of a long-term project to use pig kidneys to make support structures known as scaffolds that could potentially be used to build replacement kidneys for human patients with end-stage renal disease.
The final test of the dual-approach was implanting the scaffolds in pigs weighing 90 to 110 pounds.
Using pig kidneys as scaffolds for human patients has several advantages including that the organs are similar in size
and that pig heart valves--removed of cells--have safety been used in patients for more than three decades.
#Hog workers carry drug-resistant bacteria even after they leave the farma new study suggests that nearly half of workers who care for animals in large industrial hog farming operations may be carrying home livestock-associated bacteria in their noses
Researchers had believed that livestock-associated bacteria would clear from the noses of hog workers quickly--within 24 hours.
But this small study of hog workers in North carolina reported online Sept. 8 in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine suggests it can stick around longer.
Much of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria they carried were antibiotic resistant likely due to the use of drugs both to treat sick hogs
and to promote hog growth to ready them for market sooner. The longer the bacteria stick around in workers'noses the researchers say the greater the opportunity for them to potentially spread to hog workers'families their communities
and even into hospitals where the bacteria have been associated with an increased risk of staph infections.
Before this study we didn't know much about the persistence of livestock-associated strains among workers in the United states whose primary full-time jobs involve working inside large industrial hog-confinement facilities says study author Christopher D
In Europe the children of livestock workers have been treated for infections caused by a new livestock-associated strain of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) that doesn't match the more widely found community-or hospital-associated strains.
This suggests the children may have been exposed to MRSA strains through their family members who worked on livestock farms.
Evidence of persistent carriage of this new livestock-associated strain and its drug resistance has led to restrictions on the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock overseas.
Statistics on the number of hog workers are tough to come by but census data from 2007 suggest that there are roughly 292000 livestock workers in the United states. In North carolina where the study was conducted there are roughly 6400 workers employed at 938 hog operations that reported hired labor.
The study done in conjunction with researchers from the University of North carolina Gillings School of Global Public health
and the Statens Serum Institute and community organizers from the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH) involved 22 hog workers in North carolina.
Between June and August 2012 researchers recruited industrial hog workers to be studied for two weeks. In the first week the goal was for workers to have at least a 24-hour stretch off from work.
whether the strains were traditionally found in livestock or humans and whether the bacteria were drug resistant.
Eighty-six percent of the hog workers--19 of them--carried at least one type of Staphylococcus aureus at some point during the study period
while 16 of them (73 percent) carried the livestock-associated strain at some point. In contrast only about one-third of the general population carry a strain of Staphylococcus aureus associated with humans.
what the researchers call persistent carriers of livestock-associated Staph meaning they had these strains in their noses all
Researchers found that even after up to four days away from the hog operation the bacteria were still present in workers'noses.
if this is mainly a workplace hazard associated with hog farming or is it a threat to public health at large he says.
Persistence of livestock-associated antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus among industrial hog operation workers in North carolina over 14 days was written by Maya Nadimpalli Jessica L. Rinsky Steve Wing Devon
The production of both beef cattle and dairy cows is tied to especially high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
For starters cows don't efficiently convert plant-based feed into muscle or milk so they must eat lots of feed.
In addition cows burp lots of methane and their manure also releases this potent greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing the U s. diet are dominated by the meats category according to Heller and Keoleian.
and seasonal allergies and known anaphylaxis to penicillin and cow's milk she wasn't known to be allergic to any of the ingredients in the pie.
However the mushrooms could be used as food supplement for cattle the gel can be used to increase moisture retention in some crops
and increased livestock production will raise methane levels. They argue that current food demand trends must change through reducing waste and encouraging balanced diets.
and livestock methane emissions are likely to cause GHG from food production to increase by almost 80%.
The average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3 %and as we eat more meat more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals that provide meat for humans.
For example the figures included two 85g portions of red meat and five eggs per week as well as a portion of poultry a day.
The study looked at how baby birds in this case chukar partridges pheasant-like game birds from Eurasia react
and occur before other previously described uses of the wings such as for weight support during wing-assisted incline running said Evangelista who emphasized that no chukar chicks were injured in the process.
and that the ability to steer or maneuver is absent early in evolution. Falling gliding and flyingsuch activity has never been observed regularly in nature
Seeing it develop first in very young chicks indirectly supports this idea. Symmetric flapping while running is certainly one possible context in
The researchers also tested the young chicks to see if they flapped their wings while running up an incline.
Domestication of animals started as early as 9000 to 15000 years ago and initially involved dogs cattle sheep goats and pigs.
Korea Thailand Russia Estonia Italy Spain and two cities in the United states. The consumers completed questionnaires about their purchase storage handling and preparation practices of poultry and eggs.
The study produced the article Eggs and Poultry: Purchase Storage and Preparation Practices of Consumers in Selected Asian countries
and poultry because these products are the source of two main bacteria: salmonella and campylobacterâ#Koppel said.
Another similar finding was that the majority of consumers in these countries buy raw poultry
The riskiest behavior was exhibited in preparing the eggs and poultry. About 90 percent of consumers in Colombia and 70 percent of consumers in India washed these products in the sink before preparation.
Here local farmers see cheetahs as a potential threat for their cattle. The conflict is an old one:
wherever there are carnivorous wild animals farmers are concerned about their livestock. In Namibia the concern refers to the possible threat from cheetahs on cattle.
When farmers in Namibia are missing a bovine calf cheetahs are regularly under suspicion--nowhere else in the world are there as many animals of this vulnerable species as on commercial farmland in Namibia.
But the suspicion can rarely be confirmed without demur. In their recent study scientists of the IZW investigated
whether cattle is on top of the cheetahs'menu. For this purpose they used an indirect method with
Small antelopes such as springbok or steenbok specialise on shrubs and herbs whereas the oryx antelope feeds on grass--just like the cattle.
The study shows that herbivores of the C4 food chain to which cattle belong are nearly irrelevant to the cheetah's diet.
and welfare of beef cattle and other ruminant animals suffering from lameness and following castration dehorning and other painful but necessary management procedures.
and Improving Performance of Cattle Undergoing Dehorning or Castration was awarded to the Kansas State university Research Foundation a nonprofit corporation responsible for managing technology transfer activities at the university.
and improve the performance of cattle. Researchers found that combinations of meloxicam and gabapentin improved the welfare of cattle by reducing the severity of lameness.
Meloxicam alone improved weight gain after dehorning and reduced the incidence of bovine respiratory disease after castration.
Once meloxicam was administered orally to beef cattle prior to these common procedures the cattle gained more weight
and control diseases in cattle. This reduces the risk of antibiotic resistance selection and has positive implications for both human and animal health.
MUSTANG-1. 5 the even more-sensitive successor to MUSTANG and ARGUS a camera designed for mapping the distribution of organic molecules in space.
#Piglet weaning age no bar to litter frequencyuniversity of Adelaide research has shown that piglets can be weaned later with no negative effects on sow birthing frequency.
The outcome of the study at the University's Roseworthy campus published in the journal Animal Reproduction Science is an important finding for pig producers.
It allows improvements in piglet health and welfare without loss of production. Sows don't usually start their oestrous cycles again during lactation only coming on heat after their piglets have been weaned says Ms Alice Weaver Phd candidate with the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences.
In commercial pig production this has meant the reduction of piglet weaning ages in order to maximize the number of litters a sow can produce each year.
Unfortunately piglets weaned early often don't thrive with reduced growth and diarrhea common. Ms Weaver's study investigated
whether oestrus could be stimulated while sows were still feeding their piglets so the sows could be mated before their piglets were weaned.
Her project was under the supervision of Dr Will van Wettere who leads a number of research projects in improving pig fertility and life expectancy of piglets.
Different treatment groups were set up among the Large White/Landrace cross sows with half of the sows weaned early at day seven after birth and half at day 26.
Half of each group had daily contact with boars from day seven. The research showed that providing sows daily contact with a mature male pig seven days after giving birth is sufficient to stimulate oestrus regardless of
whether they were still suckling a litter or not says Ms Weaver. We've shown that piglet weaning age should be able to be increased with sows still producing the average 2. 4 litters a year.
This is very important to the pig industry and should lead to improvements in post-weaning growth and the welfare and survival of piglets.
Most piglets in Australia are weaned at an average of 24 days. If we can push that out to at least 30 days the extra time will have significant benefit for the piglets.
Continuing research is looking at whether there are any negative impacts on the following litter which would be conceived
and gestating while the sow was still suckling the previous litter. The research is supported by the Pork CRC
which is based at the Roseworthy campus. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Adelaide.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Sheepdogs use simple rules to herd sheepsheepdogs use just two simple rules to round up large herds of sheep scientists have discovered.
The findings could lead to the development of robots that can gather and herd livestock crowd control techniques
or new methods to clean up the environment. For the first time scientists used GPS technology to understand how sheepdogs do their jobs so well.
Until now they had no idea how the dogs manage to get so many unwilling sheep to move in the same direction.
NERC fellow Dr Andrew King of Swansea University fitted a flock of sheep and a sheepdog with backpacks containing extremely accurate GPS devices designed by colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College London.
Daniel Strã mbom of Uppsala University and colleagues then used data from these devices together with computer simulations to develop a mathematical shepherding model.
The team found that sheepdogs likely use just two simple rulesl: to collect the sheep
when they're dispersed and drive them forward when they're aggregated. In the model a single shepherd could herd a flock of more than 100 individuals using these two simple rules.
'If you watch sheepdogs rounding up sheep the dog weaves back and forth behind the flock in exactly the way that we see in the model'says King.'
If the dog sees gaps between the sheep or the gaps are getting bigger the dog needs to bring them together'he explains.'
'There are numerous applications for this knowledge such as crowd control cleaning up the environment herding of livestock keeping animals away from sensitive areas
#Pig pheromone proves useful in curtailing bad behavior in dogsa professor at Texas Tech discovers Androstenone can stop dogs from barking jumping.
And in that capacity he just happened to have a product on hand at his house from a previous research study called Boar Mate an odorous concoction which helps farmers with swine breeding.
Assist to pigs Not only did the discovery of this product by Mcglone come by accident it came from a completely different species. Mcglone said Boar Mate contains a pig pheromone defined as substances secreted to the outside by an individual and received by a second individual of the same species in
which when secreted by male pigs is picked up by female pigs in heat and ready to breed.
Androstenone is produced by pigs in their saliva or fat but Boar Mate androstenone is synthesized in a laboratory.
One spray of Boar Mate on Toto was all it took to set the wheels of experimentation in motion.
Mcglone contacted a canine research site he had worked with on previous experiments knowing this site had a wide array of adult dogs both mixed and pure breeds.
It's not limited to pig pheromones either as he is testing those from dogs cats pigs and horses.
For now though there are quite a few pet owners relieved to be able to stop their pets'bad behavior
healthy pig breedingscientists found a way to reduce the application of antibiotics in pig breeding by using antimicrobial peptides.
This causes big problems for breeders when using artificial insemination the method most commonly used in assisted reproductive technology in pig production worldwide.
Freshly retrieved boar ejaculates always contain bacteria. These germs are detrimental to the quality as well as the longevity of liquid preserved sperm with dire negative consequences for fertility.
if their immune system is compromised said Deborah J. Springer Ph d. lead study author and postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at Duke university School of medicine.
and then sent those specimens to Springer at Duke. Springer DNA-sequenced the samples from California
and compared the sequences to those obtained from HIV/AIDS patients with C. gattii infections.
and serve as a source of ongoing infections Springer said. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Duke university.
#Why major cow milk allergen is actually allergeniccow milk allergy occurs in children and in adults.
In the case of the potentially much more dangerous cow milk allergy however the body's immune system attacks milk proteins with its own Ige antibodies.
and feeding cows may be involved a factor in this phenomenon. Iron loading may depend on whether the milk is produced organically or conventionally.
#Trees, shrubs invading critical grasslands, diminish cattle productionhalf of Earth's land mass is made up of rangelands
and shrub cover of one percent leads to a two percent loss in livestock production.
The research team used census data from the U s. and Argentina to find out how much livestock exists within the majority of the countries'rangelands.
These lands support roughly 40 million heads of cattle. Researchers also used remote sensors to calculate the production of grasses and shrubs.
And to account for the effects of different socioeconomic factors researchers quantified the impact of tree cover on livestock production in two areas of the world that have similar environments but different level of economic development.
Surprisingly the presence of trees explained a larger fraction of livestock production in Argentina than in the US.
But in the U s. many people who own ranches don't actually raise cattle. They are using the land for many other different purposes.
While ranchers clearly depend on grasslands to support healthy livestock ecosystems also provide a range of other services to humans.
We now know how much increase in tree cover is affecting the cattle ranchers. Sala and his colleagues hope that the information found in their study will be used to inform discussions as policy makers
#Pigs hearts transplanted into baboon hosts remain viable more than a yearinvestigators from the National Heart Lung
and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National institutes of health (NIH) have transplanted successfully hearts from genetically engineered piglets into baboons'abdomens
The first advance was the ability to produce genetically engineered pigs as a source of donor organs by NHLBI's collaborator Revivicor Inc. The pigs had the genes that cause adverse immunologic reactions in humans knocked out and human
Pigs were chosen because their anatomy is compatible with that of humans and they have a rapid breeding cycle among other reasons.
In this study researchers compared the survival of hearts from genetically engineered piglets that were organized into different experimental groups based on the genetic modifications introduced.
The gene that synthesizes the enzyme alpha 1-3 galactosidase transferase was knocked out in all piglets
The pig hearts also expressed one or two human transgenes to prevent blood from clotting.
This longest-surviving group was the only one that had the human thrombomodulin gene added to the pigs'genome.
The researchers'next step is to use hearts from the genetically-engineered pigs with the most effective immunosuppression in the current experiments to test
whether the pig hearts can sustain full life support when replacing the original baboon hearts.
Our study has demonstrated that by using hearts from genetically engineered pigs in combination with target-specific immunosuppression of recipient baboons organ survival can be prolonged significantly.
The study part of multi-million-dollar Operation Idiopathic Decline and funded by the private Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation is titled Evidence of an Oxispirura petrowi Epizootic in Northern bobwhites
(Colinus virginianus) Texas USA. It was published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases and provides evidence of how the parasitic outbreak began.
The Rolling Plains of West Texas are a major stronghold for wild bobwhite quail hunting in the United states
when harriers breed at levels that have a significant economic impact on grouse shoots the excess chicks would be removed from the grouse moors reared in captivity
While this is good news for ravens it could be bad news for sensitive prey species including the Greater Sage-grouse.
Predation risk would now likely be greater for sage-grouse eggs and young and correspondingly lower for adult sage-grouse and other prey species. This adds new insights for ecosystem managers who seek to understand the complex relationships between ravens hawks sage-grouse populations and habitat changes.
Increases In common Raven distribution and abundance in the American west mirror declines in distribution and abundance of Greater Sage-grouse where energy transmission corridors and other land use changes have altered sagebrush steppe
habitat said David Delehanty of ISU. Industrial development wildfires invasive plant species and other disturbances are changing sagebrush landscapes throughout the western United states. Our results shed light on how these avian predators might change with them said Coates of USGS. The study Landscape alterations
#Wild sheep show benefits of putting up with parasitesin the first evidence that natural selection favors an individual's infection tolerance researchers from Princeton university
and the University of Edinburgh have found that an animal's ability to endure an internal parasite strongly influences its reproductive success. Reported in the journal PLOS Biology the finding could provide the groundwork for boosting the resilience of humans and livestock to infection.
The researchers used 25 years of data on a population of wild sheep living on an island in northwest Scotland to assess the evolutionary importance of infection tolerance.
They first examined the relationship between each sheep's body weight and its level of infection with nematodes tiny parasitic worms that thrive in the gastrointestinal tract of sheep.
The level of infection was determined by the number of nematode eggs per gram of the animal's feces.
an adult female sheep with the maximum egg count of 2000 eggs per gram of feces might lose as little as 2 percent or as much as 20 percent of her body weight.
The researchers then tracked the number of offspring produced by each of nearly 2500 sheep
and found that sheep with the highest tolerance to nematode infection produced the most offspring while sheep with lower parasite tolerance left fewer descendants.
Graham and her colleagues used the wealth of information collected over many years on the Soay sheep living on the island of Hirta about 100 miles west of the Scottish mainland.
These sheep provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of parasites weather vegetation changes and other factors on a population of wild animals.
Brought to the island by people about 4000 years ago the sheep have run wild since the last permanent human inhabitants left Hirta in 1930.
By keeping a detailed pedigree the researchers of the St kilda Soay Sheep Project can trace any individual's ancestry back to the beginning of the project in 1985
Graham and her colleagues identified a similar evolutionary tradeoff in a 2010 study that compared immune-response levels and reproductive success in female Soay sheep.
The team has not yet been able to detect costs of parasite tolerance in the sheep
Understanding the genetic underpinnings of nematode tolerance could someday guide efforts to boost tolerance in livestock by identifying
In the long term this suggests that it could be profitable to invest in breeding tolerant livestock.
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