In Ethiopia, livestock is of vital importance for the livelihood of farmers acting both as important food source as well as an economical asset. Infectious diseases threatening the health and lives of these animals are therefore of major concern both for human and animal health. For young ruminants diarrheic diseases have a major impact leading to serious health problems, malnutrition and often to death. The causes of diarrheic disease is often of infectious origin but other factors can also play a role. In Ethiopia there has never been a thorough investigation on what types of infectious agents circulate in ruminants with diarrhea. The scope of this project is therefore to identify and characterise the infectious agents behind diarrhea of ruminants in Ethiopia. By utilising metagenomics we aim to characterise the virome and microbiota and possibly find novel variants of viruses.