Assessment of Ewes' Reproductive Activity by Fecal Estrogen metabolite

The intensive sheep management and wide spread application of the controlled breeding techniques such as estrus synchronization, artificial insemination, out of season breeding, finding out accurate techniques for assessment of reproductive activity in general and practical test for early pregnancy diagnosis increase the need to adjust the hormonal cascade through hypothalamic-hypophyseal-gonadal axis. In addition, detecting and/or illustrating the normal mating behavior puberty, period of estrus cycle and its hormonal regulation, pregnancy, lambing and post-natal care is needed to be accurately known to attain the most optimum reproductive efficiency and to magnify the marginal profit gained from sheep farming projects.The extraction and immunoassay of fecal steroids is an increasingly common technique, used in both captive and field studies to provide an approximation of animals' circulating hormones through noninvasive method. Moreover, the technique for extraction of steroid hormones from feces is an important tool for monitoring the reproductive function of the animals.