Pregnancy diagnosis, fetal quantification and gender estimation by ultra-sonography in ewes

Abstract

The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the accuracy of gestation, fetal sexing and quantification diagnoses in ewes. Pregnancy and fetal quantification were diagnosed in 105 ewes at 35 days of pregnancy. For the fetal gender diagnosis sexing diagnose 55 ewes between 49 and 59 days of pregnancy were used. All exams were recorded on DVD for posterior analysis. After birth, lamb sex was recorded to determine fetal sexing precision. Data were analyzed by chisquare (χ2) or Fisher's test, with a significance of 0.05. One hundred percent of pregnancy ultrasound diagnoses were correct. As for the fetal quantification diagnoses, there was an error of 12%. It was possible to diagnose the fetal sex in 87% of the 69 examined fetuses, and 90% of these were estimated correctly. The real-time ultrasound diagnoses were not different from the recorded DVD image diagnoses. Therefore, pregnancy diagnosis accuracy may reach 100%, differing from fetal gender estimation and quantification, which are dependent upon other variables such as fetal gender and examiner experience.