Iraqi Journal of Veterinary Sciences

Abstract

The hair density of the back region in water buffalo was calculated by counting the number of hair follicles in the horizontal sections prepared by conventional paraffin embedding method and stained with hematoxylin and eosin . The calculated hair density was 3.53 hair follicle/mm2 of the buffalo skin. All the hair follicles were of primary type and distributed randomly.
The skin samples showed different variable shrinkage percentage during routine histological technique. The shrinkage percentage of surface area of the stained sections was found to be 21 % of the original value. Thus the correction factor of the hair density was calculated to be 0.79, this leads to conclusion that the actual hair density of the back region of the skin of living buffalo is 2.78 hair follicle/mm2 only .