Lucy waits patiently while a technician uses an ultrasound monitor to determine the stage of her pregnancy. Its a routine procedure, but Lucy isnt a typical patient. Lucy is an Angus heifer and the technician is Melanie Starbuck, doctoral student in the interdisciplinary program in reproductive physiology at West Virginia Universitys Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences.

WVU students, assisted by Davis College faculty Robert Dailey, Paul Lewis, Matthew Wilson and Keith Inskeep, are utilizing ultrasound technology for a variety of uses on sheep, cows, alpacas and horses on University and cooperating farms.

Ultrasonography, or ultrasound, is commonly used in human medicine to estimate gestational age, multiple gestations and fetal malformations in pregnant women. Real-time ultrasound consists of high-frequency sound waves that allow two-dimensional imaging of the fetus to be displayed on a monitors screen, according to the National Library of Medicine.

Alison Brown-Dixon, a doctoral candidate in reproductive physiology from Johnson City, Tenn., is tracking embryonic and fetal mortality in sheep on farms in West Virginia and Ohio. A paper on her work will be presented at the Sixth International Symposium on Reproduction in Domestic Ruminants in Edinburgh, Scotland in August.

The use of ultrasound by reproductive physiology doctoral student Beth Costine to identify sheep that had ovulated in both ovaries helped determine how the early embryo signals to the mother that it is present.

“My use for ultrasound in that study was to make my research more efficient, rather than a direct application for industry,”said Costine of Chester, N.H. She employed ultrasonography in cows in a study,”Luteal Function in Postpartum Beef Cows,”which she presented at the Society for the Study of Reproductions annual meeting in Baltimore in July.

Starbuck, of Columbia, Mo., presented her work on late embryonic and early fetal mortality in dairy cows as part of a paper competition for young investigators at the joint meeting of the American Societies of Animal and Dairy Science and the Canadian Society of Animal Science in Quebec City in July. Her successful participation in the competition helped to pay for her trip to the meeting. Starbuck utilized ultrasonography to diagnose and monitor pregnancy and pregnancy losses in dairy cows and is using it in another study in beef and dairy cows treated with a growth hormone.

Other students, including Quinn Baptiste, a student from Trinidad and Tobago who recently completed his masters degree in animal and veterinary sciences, and Jamie Kinsey, a masters candidate from Flemington, W.Va., are using the equipment to diagnose pregnancy in beef heifers being fed different nutritional regimens.

“Ultrasonography is an art and requires practice to recognize the particular image that is needed, to make measurements or interpretations of that image and to know characteristics that are important to record, or are useful in determining the functional state of the animal, such as pregnant or non-pregnant,”said Inskeep, who began his career at WVU in 1964.

If it takes practice, then Inskeep has it. Inskeep first began using primitive forms of ultrasonography in the late 1960s, and then began utilizing current real-time ultrasonography in 1984 when he took a course on its uses at the University of Wisconsin under O.J. Ginther.

Inskeep says Ginther pioneered the use of ultrasonography to study ovarian and uterine function in cattle and horses.

Inskeep notes that the use of ultrasonography is very common in animal science and in veterinary practice. Ultrasonography has been used at WVU not only in reproductive physiology, but also in evaluation of carcass characteristics such as muscle and fitness in live animals. Jim Pritchard, WVU Extensions Pocahontas County agent, is the only certified carcass ultrasonographer in West Virginia.