Caprine ovarian and uterine lesions: An abattoir survey

Abstract

Goat rearing is popular among Ugandan farmers especially the small scale farm holders. However, very limited information is available on the defects of the female reproductive organs despite their significance in guiding selection, breeding and strategic control programmes for various disease conditions which are ultimately aimed at increasing enterprise profitability. In order to bridge this gap, a study was carried out from Uganda Meat Industries (UMI) and Kampala City Council (KCC) abattoirs to establish the nature and prevalence of such defects. A total of 1000 female goats were randomly sampled for a period of seven months for gross genital defects. Gross genital defects-bearing tracts were sampled for histopathology on all the segments of the system. Gross genital defects had an overall prevalence of 20.9%, but those that can result into infertility or sterility were detected in 13.6% of the examined goats. The uterus exhibited the highest prevalence of lesions (14.6%) followed by the ovary (8.6%). Oviducts and the cervix had rates of lesions of 4.5% and 2.6%, respectively. Cervical lesions included cervicitis (1.4%), haemorrhages (0.3%) and adenomyosis (0.9%). Major uterine lesions included: metritis and endometritis (6.3%), adenomyosis (5.4%), intra-uterine foetal deaths (1.9%), haemorrhages (3.0%), hydrometra (0.5%) and pyometra (0.4%). Others were cystic endometrial hyperplasia (0.2%), perimetritis (0.3%), serosal cysts (0.2%), unilateral caruncular necrosis (0.2%) and melanosis (0.1%). Salphingeal lesions included salphingitis (3.7%) and hydrosalphinx (0.8%). Detected ovarian lesions included mainly tubo-ovarian–bursal adhesions (3.7%), paraovarian cysts (2.2%), cystic corpora lutea (2.2%), cystic graffian follicles (1.1%) and granulosa-thecal cell tumour (0.1%). Others were ovarian quiescence (0.4%) and Cysticercus tenuicolis cyst (0.1%). Overall, majority of the lesions were infectious in nature and their prevalence increased with age. Foetal wastage had a prevalence of 38.4%. This study implicated infections and foetal deaths as the major causes of genital lesions and revealed a higher prevalence of adenomyosis among goats than that reported in literature. Regular herd health investigations should be carried out to determine the extent and nature of the causes of infertility so as to appropriately advice the farmers.