Summary Residual maximum likelihood procedure was applied to analyse data from a one‐to‐one pedigreed Japanese quail population, using an animal model to estimate the genetic parameters of weekly liveweights. Records of 1108 animals from 113 sires and 152 dams were analysed. An individual animal model was used. The heritabilities of weights for hatching (HW) with their standard errors (SE), week 1 (W1), week 2 (W2), week 3 (W3), week 4 (W4), week 5 (W5) and week 6 (W6) were 0.51 ± 0.05, 0.32 ± 0.06, 0.20 ± 0.05, 0.21 ± 0.06, 0.20 ± 0.05, 0.15 ± 0.04 and 0.14 ± 0.04, respectively. The strongest genetic correlations were found between W1 and W3 (0.98 ± 0.11). Generally, genetic correlations were higher than the phenotypic correlations. The highest phenotypic correlation (0.85) was between the W4 and W5 weights. Strong genetic correlations among the weekly weights suggest that selection for W5 or W6 weight may be based on weights recorded earlier.

Abstract. This study was conducted to determine effect of different fattening methods on slaughter and carcass characteristics of Tuj male lambs. Tuj lambs (n=18) were used in three groups with six lambs in each group. Group 1 was only grazed on the pasture and group 2 was supplemented 200 g concentrate with the pasture. Group 3 was supplemented 400 g concentrate with the pasture. Lambs were grazed on the pasture for 8 h/day. Concentrate with 18.5% CP and 2650 kcal/kg ME was fed to lambs in addition to pasture. At the end of three months of experiment, the lambs were slaughter and carcass characteristics and carcass measurements were evaluated. Slaughter weights of group 1, 2 and 3 were 44.10, 44.86 and 46.00 kg, respectively, and hot carcass weights were 20.66, 21.36 and 22.15 kg, respectively, hot dressing percentage 46.85, 47.56 and 47.64%, respectively. The differences between groups of slaughter and carcass characteristics and carcass measurements of lambs were not statistically significant (P>0.05). As a conclusion, supplementations of concentrate feed to grazing lambs on the pasture were no effect on slaughter and carcass characteristics and carcass measurement in lambs.

No abstract

This study was conducted in order to determine the prevalence and trends of antibodies to syphilis among Turkish blood donors (BDs) at the 22 National Blood Transfusion Service, Kizilay, between 1989 and 2004. Among the 6,240,130 BDs, a reactive result was obtained with the rapid plasma reagin test for 6864 donors (0.11%). A serious increasing trend was observed between 1989 and 1992 (41/100.000 versus 92/100.000 cases, P = 0.003, CI 95, 33-107), in 1998, the rates were observed to have increased approximately 4.01 times compared with that of 1989 (41/100,000 versus 168/000,000, P = 0.001, CI 95, 28-183). After 2002, syphilis seropositivity showed a marked decreasing trend (P = 0.002, CI 95, 36-118). However, as this survey shows, the rate of seropositive donors for syphilis has been greatly reduced but it is believed that a more thorough management strategy is necessary in order to cause a further reduction in Turkey.

No abstract