Northern blot hybridization showed that bovine and sheep testis, unlike testes from other mammals, contain moderate levels of an apparently normal oxytocin gene transcript. In situ hybridization localized this mRNA to within the seminiferous tubules, possibly in the Sertoli cells. Conflicting with this result, immunohistochemistry showed that both oxytocin and the syngeneic neurophysin I epitopes are both clearly restricted to the Leydig cells, being expressed here at a low level. Since illegitimate transcription from spurious start sites can lead to a lack of translation product, the integrity of the major ruminant testicular transcripts of the oxytocin gene was checked using differential hybridization, RNase protection and multiple polymerase chain reaction assays. All tests showed the transcripts to have a normal, translatable composition and to be transcribed from the conventional 5' initiation site. Therefore, the block in oxytocin gene expression within the tubules is probably due to a lesion at the post-transcriptional level. The low level peptide expression in the Leydig cells can probably be attributed to the presence of functional transcripts in these cells, which are below the level of significant detection for the in situ hybridization assay. Journal of Endocrinology (1994) 140, 63–72