1996 Volume 1996 Issue 37 Pages 1-6
An outbreak of the unusual type of umbilical cord (UC) bleeding, which caused a big economical loss, was observed in one farm in Chiba prefecture and its occurrence pattern, clinical symptoms and hematological data were examined. The farm had 350 breeding pigs and raised the new-borne pigs. Between June 1994 and February 1995, the UC bleeding was observed in 223 cases (40.8%) of 547 parturitions and 83 new-borne pigs were died due to bleeding. Epidemiological investigation indicated that these bleedings were not due to hereditary or infectious causes. The new-borne pigs did not show any clinical symptoms. They had good contractions of the umbilical artery just after birth, however, the UC gradually became to be congested by blood and started bleeding at 1 hour and 34 min (+-45 min) after their births. Thereafter, the congestions of UC were deteriorated and blood was leaked from both of cutting stumps and some injured parts of the UC. In the blood coagulation analysis, number of blood platelet, bleeding time, coagulating time, APT and PT were all within the normal levels, however, decreased level of fibrinogen was detected. No major abnormalities were observed in pathological examinations. Based on the above examinations, these UC bleeding symptoms were suspected to be caused by incomplete blood coagulations due to the decreased level of fibrinogen in the fetus.
