The Sheep

The sheep is one of the most profitable animals on the farm. Besides increasing the fertility of the land sheep furnish two incomes during the year, namely; from the sale of wool in the summer and from the sale of lambs in ·the fall or winter. Sheep are economical meat producers, requiring less than the average number of pounds of feed to produce a pound of gain. This gain usually brings as much in the market as gain made by any other meat-producing animal. The gain is oftentimes made under conditions where other animals would starve, and also from vegetation in fields which would probably otherwise be a waste. Sheep have no equal as a weed destroyer, eating nearly all the weeds and grasses found on the farm. I have seen sheep in the dry lot eat Canadian thistles given with green feed. By eating these ,weeds and weed seeds sheep aid in getting the farm into a better state of cultivation. Sheep need pasture up :to the time grain is stacked, but from then on they will live and do well in the stubble field where rape has been sown with the small grain, until after corn is husked, then they do well in the stalk field.· The lambs at weaning time can be turned into the cornfield and they will eat the corn leaves and husks, do well, and get in condition for the butcher before they learn to eat corn from the ear. The object of this bulletin is to furnish information on the care of sheep for the production of mutton and wool. For convenience, we have treated the two subjects separately. Since the editions of nearly all our bulletins at this Station on feeding sheep are exhausted, we also include herein some of the results o.f our former experiments

Corn Silage for Beef Production

The object of this experiment was to ascertain the feeding value of silage made from corn cut at different stages of growth. In other feeding trials made at this Station it has been shown that corn silage when fed alone without other supplementary feeds produces very satisfactory gains and at a comparatively low cost. Sometimes corn does not mature or is frosted before being put into the silo. These feeding trials were conducted to determine the feed value of corn silage for steers when made under the following conditions: 1. When in the blister or milk stage. 2. When in the dough stage. 3. When in the glazed or dented stage. 4. When well matured but frosted

Nuclear Effects on Bremsstrahlung Neutrino Rates of Astrophysical Interest

We calculate in this work the rates for the neutrino pair production by nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung taking into account the full contribution from a nuclear one-pion-exchange potential. It is shown that if the temperatures are low enough ($T \leq 20 MeV$), the integration over the nuclear part can be done for the general case, ranging from the completely degenerate (D) to the non-degenerate (ND) regime. We find that the inclusion of the full nuclear contribution enhances the neutrino pair production by $nn$ and $pp$ bremsstrahlung by a factor of about two in both the D and ND limits when compared with previous calculations. This result may be relevant for the physical conditions of interest in the semitransparent regions near the neutrinosphere in type II supernovae, cooling of neutron stars and other astrophysical situations.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, LaTex file. submitted to PR

Decoherence Strength of Multiple Non-Markovian Environments

It is known that one can characterize the decoherence strength of a Markovian environment by the product of its temperature and induced damping, and order the decoherence strength of multiple environments by this quantity. We show that for non-Markovian environments in the weak coupling regime there also exists a natural (albeit partial) ordering of environment-induced irreversibility within a perturbative treatment. This measure can be applied to both low-temperature and non-equilibrium environments.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, v3 included figure, appendix, and clarification of result

Molecular and phylogenetic analysis of Cryptosporidium muris from various hosts

Isolates of Cryptosporidium muris and C. serpentis were characterized from different hosts using nucleotide sequence analysis of the rDNA 18S and ITS1 regions, and the heat-shock (HSP-70) gene. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed preliminary evidence that C. muris is not a uniform species. Two distinct genotypes were identified within C. muris; (1) C. muris genotype A; comprising bovine and camel isolates of C. muris from different geographical locations, and (2) C. muris genotype B comprising C. muris isolates from mice, a hamster, a rock hyrax and a camel from the same enclosure. These 2 genotypes may represent separate species but further biological and molecular studies are required for confirmation

Production and processing studies on calpain-system gene markers for tenderness in Brahman cattle: 2. Objective meat quality

Effects and interactions of calpain-system tenderness gene markers on objective meat quality traits of Brahman (Bos indicus) cattle were quantified within 2 concurrent experiments at different locations. Cattle were selected for study from commercial and research herds at weaning based on their genotype for cal-pastatin (CAST) and calpain 3 (GAPN3) gene markers for beef tenderness. Gene marker status for i-calpain (CAPN1-4751 and CAPN1-316) was also determined for inclusion in statistical analyses. Eighty-two heifer and 82 castrated male cattle with 0 or 2 favorable alleles for CAST and CAPN3 were studied in New South Wales (NSW), and 143 castrated male cattle with 0, 1, or 2 favorable alleles for CAST and CAPN3 were studied in Western Australia (WA). The cattle were backgrounded for 6 to 8 mo and grain-fed for 117 d (NSW) or 80 d (WA) before slaughter. One-half the cattle in each experiment were implanted with a hormonal growth promotant during feedlotting. One side of each carcass was suspended from the Achilles tendon (AT) and the other from the pelvis (tenderstretch). The M. longissimus lumborum from both sides and the M. semitendinosus from the AT side were collected; then samples of each were aged at 1°C for 1 or 7 d. Favorable alleles for one or more markers reduced shear force, with little effect on other meat quality traits. The size of effects of individual markers varied with site, muscle, method of carcass suspension, and aging period. Individual marker effects were additive as evident in cattle with 4 favorable alleles for CAST and CAPN3 markers, which had shear force reductions of 12.2 N (P 0.05) of interactions between the gene markers, or between the hormonal growth promotant and gene markers for any meat quality traits. This study provides further evidence that selection based on the CAST or CAPN3 gene markers improves meat tenderness in Brahman cattle, with little if any detrimental effects on other meat quality traits. The CAPN1-4751 gene marker also improved beef tenderness without affecting other objective meat quality traits in heterozygous cattle compared with homozygotes for the unfavorable allele

Study of the radiative decay ϕ→ηγ\phi \to \eta \gamma with CMD-2 detector

Using the $1.9 pb^{-1}$ of data collected with the CMD-2 detector at VEPP-2M the decay mode $\phi \to \eta \gamma$, $\eta \to \pi^+\pi^-\pi^0$ has been studied. The obtained branching ratio is B($\phi \to \eta \gamma) = (1.18 \pm 0.03 \pm 0.06)$.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, LaTex2e, to be published in Phys. Lett.

Study of KS KL Coupled Decays and KL -Be Interactions with the CMD-2 Detector at VEPP-2M Collider

The integrated luminosity about 4000 inverse nanobarn of around phi meson mass ( 5 millions of phi mesons) has been collected with the CMD-2 detector at the VEPP-2M collider. A latest analysis of the KS KL coupled decays based on 30 % of available data is presented in this paper. The KS KL pairs from phi meson decays were reconstructed in the drift chamber when both kaons decayed into two charged particles. From a sample of 1423 coupled decays a selection of candidates to the CP violating KL into pi+ pi- decay was performed. CP violating decays were not identified because of the domination of events with a KL regenerating at the Be beam pipe into KS and a background from KL semileptonic decays. The regeneration cross section of 110 MeV/c KL mesons was found to be 53 +- 17 mb in agreement with theoretical expectations. The angular distribution of KS mesons after regeneration and the total cross section of KL for Be have been measured.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Milagrito: a TeV air-shower array

Milagrito, a large, covered water-Cherenkov detector, was the world's first air-shower-particle detector sensitive to cosmic gamma rays below 1 TeV. It served as a prototype for the Milagro detector and operated from February 1997 to May 1998. This paper gives a description of Milagrito, a summary of the operating experience, and early results that demonstrate the capabilities of this technique.Comment: 38 pages including 24 figure