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Mastitis is the most important and expensive disease of dairy industry. A clear cut idea about the progression of clinical cases of mastitis in a herd is essential for effective mastitis prevention and control program. Hidden Markov model is a doubly stochastic process with an underlying stochastic process that is not observable (it is hidden), but can only be observed through another set of stochastic processes that produce the sequence of observed symbols. The present study reveals the most probable sequence of stages of bovine clinical mastitis which are hidden inside the body using the transition probabilities between the stages and also using the emission probabilities of possible symptoms exhibited in each stage of the disease as an application of hidden Markov model. Clinical mastitis constituted 46.8 percent of the total mastitis cases presented. The sequence of progression of the stages of mastitis obtained as viterbi path from the overall cases of bovine clinical mastitis studied was W1→ W2 → W1 → W2 → W1, where W1 is the stage of inflammatory response and W2 is the stage of bacterial flare up and production of toxins.
Keywords: Mastitis in cows, Hidden Markov model, Probability.