A cross sectional study was conducted from October 2014 to June 2015 to investigate thernoccurrence of paratuberculosis among apparently healthy sheep and goats slaughtered inrnBishoftu ELFORA Export Abattoir, Mojo Modern Export Abattoir and Organic ExportrnAbattoir, using gross pathology, histopathology, Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) staining andrnbacteriological culture of tissue lesions from paratuberculosis suspected animals. Basedrnon gross pathological examination, the prevalence of paratuberculosis was 5.21%rn(20/384) (95% CI=2.8-7.4) in sheep and 3.4% (26/768) (95% CI=2.1-4.7) in goats.rnAssociation of risk factors including species, age and origin of the animal with thernoccurrence of gross lesion showed statistically insignificant difference among the groupsrn(P>0.05). However, a relatively higher prevalence was observed in sheep, age group ofrnâ‰¥2 years and in sheep originated from Borana. Out of 13 tissue samples from eachrnspecies, histopathological examination revealed microscopic lesions consistent withrnparatuberculosis in 84.62% (11/13) of sheep and 76.9% (10/13) of goats, and the lesionsrnwere characterized by diffuse infiltration of many lymphocytes accompanied with fewrnmacrophages and epithelioid cells. Necrotic foci surrounded by lymphocytes,rnmacrophages and epithelioid cells were observed in lymph nodes of 15 % (2/13) sheeprnand 23 % (3/13) goats. Grading of histological lesions based on the type and amount ofrncellular infiltrate revealed that all positive cases of sheep and goat were categorized inrngrade 3c lesion type and diffuse lymphocytic lesion type, respectively. On direct ZNrnstaining of 46 tissue samples (20 sheep; 26 goats), acid fast positivity was recorded in 16rn(80%) sheep and 14 (53.8%) goats. Out of 46 tissue samples (20 sheep; 26 goats)rncultured on Herroldâ€™s egg yolk media (HEYM) and Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) media withrnand without 1% ferric ammonium citrate, Mycobacterium avium subspeciesrnparatuberculosis (MAP) was isolated from 2 (10%) sheep and 1 (3.8%) goat on ferricrnammonium citrate (1%) supplemented media and all isolates were acid fast positive.rnIsolated colonies were confirmed as MAP by ferric ammonium citrate dependence, theirrnlong incubation period, colony characteristics and their morphology on ZN stainedrnsmears. A linearly weighed kappa coefficient of 0.3 was obtained between histopathologyrnxiirnand ZN staining, indicating fair agreement between the two tests. In conclusion thernpresent study on sheep and goat paratuberculosis using gross pathology, histopathology,rnZN staining and culture techniques revealed the occurrence of the disease in apparentlyrnhealthy sheep and goats in Ethiopia. This result warrants the need for furtherrninvestigation on the epidemiology, characterization of the causative agent andrnassessments of the economic impact of paratuberculosis on small ruminants of Ethiopiarnin order to design feasible control strategies.