Why cow pregnancy testing is important?
Cow early pregnancy diagnosis is important for several reasons:
- It can help measure the success of a reproductive management program and detect any problems that may affect fertility.
- It can reduce the number of unnecessary inseminations of pregnant cows and avoid embryonic losses.
- It can allow for early resynchronization of non-pregnant cows and shorten the interval between AI services.
- It can provide an estimation of the cow’s calving date and facilitate culling decisions.
- It can improve reproductive efficiency and profitability on commercial dairy farms.
How should we prepare serum samples?
There are different methods to prepare serum from blood in cows. Here are some recommendations:
- Sanitize the tail or skin with an alcohol pad. Then use the lancet to bleed.
- Collect whole blood in a covered test tube or blood collection tube with EDTA. For cows, we usually collect blood from veins in tails. Use a sterile syringe is also ok if there is not vacuum blood tubes available.
- When using the syringe, blood samples shall be kept for 10-30min at room temperature and let it clot. Then, remove the clot by centrifuging at 1,000–2,000 x g for 10 minutes in a centrifuge. In practice, we use a small palm centrifuge to do it, which is economic and simple to operate.
- When using a vacuum blood tube with anticoagulant, we just need to centrifuge the tube for 10 minutes at 1,000–2,000 x g to separate the cells from the plasma.
What hormone is the Ringbio cow pregnancy test kit tested?
The current Ringbio bovine pregnancy rapid test kit utilizes the high affinity of monoclonal antibody against the pregnancy associated glycoproteins in bovine serum, which can easily identify the concentration and presence of it. If the concentration is above certain number, the cow will be pregnant and if not, the cow will not be pregnant. Further measurements such as breeding or AI shall be performed.
What is pregnancy associated glycoprotein? is it reliable for pregnancy testing?
Bovine pregnancy associated glycoprotein (boPAG) is a term that refers to a group of proteins that are expressed by the trophoblast cells in the bovine placenta. They belong to the family of aspartic proteases and have different functions during pregnancy. They can also be detected in maternal blood and milk, which makes them useful for pregnancy diagnosis in cattle. Some of the boPAGs are specific to cattle, while others are shared with other ruminants. The boPAG gene family is composed of at least 22 transcribed genes and 14 pseudogenes.
According to public literatures, boPAG can be used as a reliable pregnancy marker in serum and milk, applicable as early as approximately day 25 post breeding. Thus, the detection of boPAG in serum or milk is an alternative method to transrectal ultrasonography or progesterone assays. However, some factors such as breed, parity, stage of gestation and sampling time may affect the accuracy of boPAG testing. Thus, boPAG rapid test is always used for 28 days post AI. There are several commercial products available in the market and Ringbio cow pregnancy test kit is one example.
