**1. Introduction**

450 Health Management – Different Approaches and Solutions

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The European landscape is characterised by a range of diverse farming systems. These relate not only to varied geographical environments and animal genetic resources, but also to different social and cultural contexts for farming and food production. This diversity is unique to Europe and, among the European countries, Italy is the home for a great variety of native breeds because of its complex orography and its long boot shape with very different climatic conditions from north to south. In the 1980's, two of us moved from northern Italy to Apulia and soon came to appreciate the differences between the biotic and abiotic features of northern environment and the Apulian one. One of the most impressive differences were the enzootic tick borne diseases (TBD) and the related responses of the animals. As a consequence, much of our professional life has been devoted to the challenges posed by the diseases and to the study of the genetic peculiarities of native breeds both *per se* and in terms of their tolerance to TBD.

This report is a review of the results obtained in a 20-year experience investigating the haematological features and tolerance to tick-borne diseases in Mediterranean native sheep breeds - mainly Apulian native breeds - compared to exotic breeds under various experimental conditions. In the wake of William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), a pioneer in thermodynamics and electricity, who said in 1891 that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind, the central concept or research theme that guided all our research efforts stems from the notion that direct measurement of disease phenotypes and/or physiological features such as the hematological pattern provides a direct assay for measuring disease changes and the attitude of a genetic pool in facing disease. The work is concerned with the following main issues:


Tolerance to Tick-Borne Diseases in Sheep:

Blood Cells; N, Number of animals.

**2.3 Lamb haematological pattern** 

practically the same as in adults.

while the Gentile is a fine wool and meat-producing sheep.

variations, particularly Hb % and PCV decreased while WBC increased.

Highlights of a Twenty-Year Experience in a Mediterranean Environment 453

**Parameter** LSM±SE N LSM±SE N LSM±SE N range median RBC (106/l) 8.30.13 58 9.40.06 263 8.30.14 145 9 - 15 12 Hb (g/dl) 9.80.11 58 10.40.25 263 9.30.32 996 9 - 15 11 PCV (g/dl) 30.60.33 58 30.60.16 263 29.50.11 996 26 - 45 34 MCV (fl) 37.90.52 58 32.80.13 263 36.40.59 145 28 - 40 34 MCH (pg) 12.20.15 58 11.20.05 263 11.60.21 145 8 - 12 10 MCHC (g/dl) 32.20.16 58 34.10.44 263 32.40.36 996 31 - 34 32 WBC (103/l) 7.40.20 58 8.40.16 178 7.80.19 145 4 - 12 8

Table 1. Least-square means (LSM) and standard error (SE) of haematological data from adult animals belonging to native Apulian sheep breeds. RBC, Red Blood Cells; Hb, Haemoglobin; PCV, Packed Cell Volume; MCV, Mean Corpuscular Volume; MCH, Mean Corpuscular Haemoglobin, MCHC, Mean Corpuscular Haemoglobin Content; WBC, White

Comparison of the data in table 1 shows that the haematological patterns in the three breeds are broadly the same. Gentile sheep seem to exhibit slight differences from the other two breeds, particularly as to the erythrocyte count, the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and the mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH); in fact they are apparently the most European among the three. The traditional breeding sites of Gentile and Leccese differ substantially; one is in the southern part and the other in the northern part of Apulia, which is 500 Km long extending from the 39° to the 42° parallel. The Altamurana breeding site is in the Murgia uplands, in the central portion of Apulia. Its location in a rather harsh environment, together with the common origin of the two breeds, may account for the fact that Altamurana is closer to Leccese than to Gentile (Tab.1). However, a non-negligible point is that the physiological pattern characterizing the Altamurana and the Leccese breeds differs considerably from that of the Gentile di Puglia, as they belong to the group of dairy breeds

Although the paucity of data in the literature concerning the haematological picture of lambs is scarce, general and particular information is available on the developmental pattern of their haematological values. The development of haematological picture of Altamurana lambs was investigated to assess the normal blood parameters and check the first occurrence in the blood smears of endemic endoerythrocytic parasites (Pieragostini et al., 2000). Standard haematological values were calculated for 22 Altamurana lambs controlled from birth to 18 months of age The values recorded in the neonatal period were strongly affected by birth weight. As clearly shown in table 2, the haemoglobin concentration (Hb), packed cell volume (PCV) and white cell count (WBC) exhibited significant age-dependent

Over weeks 1-5, red cell indices mainly followed the same trends as the Hb and PCV. Over the first four months, the RBC values on average remained unchanged at approximately 9 million/l but then decreased. Starting from the fifth month, overall mean values were

**Altamurana Gentile di Puglia Leccese Jain (1993)** 
