DIAGNOSIS OF SUBCLINICAL UTERINE INFECTION AND ITS THERAPEUTIC MANAGEMENT IN CATTLE AND BUFFALOES: AN UPDATE

Optimum fertility is a pre-requisite for enhancing productivity as well as life time production of dairy bovines.However, increasing evidences indicate that with increasing milk yields, fertility has been declining.Analysis of the existing information indicates that dairy animals in our country calve at a later age, conceive at very later stage of post-partum period and the conception rate is low.Among the several reasons for extended service period (in turn calving interval), postpartum uterine infection alone accounts to around 30 per cent.Infectious diseases affecting reproductive organs can create losses throughout the reproductive cycle by decreasing ovulation rates, fertilization rates, embryonic survival rates and fetal survival rates.Understanding the molecular basis of uterine disease and identification of bio-molecules to detect uterine infection at an early stage besides developing effective preventive and therapeutic strategies is the need of the hour to realize the dream of obtaining a calf per cow per year.It is in this regard, the developments in the field of diagnosis and treatment of uterine infection, with special reference to subclinical uterine infection, are compiled, analysed and presented in this paper to provide the readers with the updated information on these aspects.