One of the effective reproductive management programs in dairy cattle is the accurate detection of pregnancy. A total of 204 non-descriptive cows were examined for pregnancy before slaughter in Sulaimani abattoir. Examinations were done by rectal palpation and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure the levels of progesterone and bovine pregnancy-associated glycoproteins (bPAGs) in their blood. Detection of a live conceptus in the uterus of slaughtered cows was used as the gold standard to determine the accuracy of the three pregnancy detection methods. The results showed that the accuracies of rectal palpation, progesterone assay, and bPAGs assay in the diagnosis of pregnancy were 87.2%, 84.8%, and 97.05%, respectively. The bPAGs assay scored the highest sensitivity (100%) for detection of pregnancy, followed by the progesterone assay (92.3%) and rectal palpation (84.6%). In addition, the specificity of the bPAGs assay was the highest (96.0%), while progesterone assay exhibited the lowest specificity (80.1%) and rectal palpation showed a specificity rate of (88.8%). In conclusion, the best method for the detection of either for early or late pregnancy in cows was the bPAGs assay, which gave the lowest number of false-positive and false-negative results.

The stability and positivity of linear positive Markovian jump systems with respect to part of the variables is considered. The methodologies of stability of positive systems with known transition probabilities based on common linear copositive Lyapunov function and stability of linear systems with respect to part of the variables are combined to find sufficient conditions of the stochastic stability and positivity of Markovian jump systems with respect to part of the variables. The results are extended for a class of nonlinear positive Markovian jump systems with respect to part of the variables. An example is given to illustrate the obtained results.