Abstract
Extract
Until recent years, the investigation of perinatal mortality in sheep has concentrated on the infectious diseases and valuable contributions to New Zealand conditions have been made by Hartley and Kater Citation(1964) and McFarlane Citation(1965, Citation1966). In Australia, the general indications are that the infectious diseases are not the major cause of death in new-born lambs (Alexander et al., Citation1959; Alexander and Peterson, Citation1961), and certainly, further studies in New Zealand (Hight and Jury, Citation1969) indicate that specific organisms may not be as important as once thought.