In the large ruminants traditional methods of pregnancy diagnosis are less efficient and most of the times their accuracy is doubtful. Unlike humans, in which super specific pregnancy molecule hCG secreted by trophoblast and start coming into the urine from 15th day of fertilization. Its presence in urine could be assessing through simple antibody flourescence technique and gives fairly positive results with high success. This type of molecule is not being identified in animals yet. Pregnancy associated glycoproteins have been identified in recent years in both large & small ruminants and their presence in blood and urine gives some way to diagnose the pregnancy. Portable ELISA kits are available in the market (not in India) to detect these molecules and may give results on the basis of Antigen – Antibody reaction. One problem persist with these molecules is that they are not so accurate for diagnosis and many times gives false positive results because of the presence of these molecules in the blood even after pregnancy is over and even uterus is involuted completly. In such conditions ultrasonography could play great role in solving the problem of pregnancy diagnosis in cattle and buffalo.
No doubt ultrasonography is promising technique which can help in improving the reproductive efficiency of animals by timely diagnosis of pregnant, pseudo pregnant and non pregnant animals. In spite of its success in many countries Indian farmers are still unable to recognize the potential of this technology. The main reason could be unawareness and myth of its sophistication. Farmers think that it has high cost of operation & they need to keep some expert for its running. Of course proper interpretation of sonographic images needs practice and expertise but careful preliminary training for farmers by experts at farms could ease the use of this technology.