Potentiating immunity of dairy animals during transition period through herbs - A review.

India has a rich diversity of medicinal plants and traditional knowledge on herbal medicine to treat the animals has both curative and preventive roles. Immunity of the animals affects the is production potential. Strengthening of non-specific immunity of the parturient animals can be used as an alternative approach to overcome the incidence of diseases in the peri and postpartum period where in these animals are more prone. One of the promising technologies is the use of immunomodulators to boost the immunity of animals during the transition period. Immunomodulators can be of natural or synthetic origin, which helps in boosting up the immunity for overcoming stress-related ailments, inhibition of reactive oxygen species generation and scavenging of free radicals to ensure the general wellbeing of animals. In the recent years, several different approaches have been examined to investigate the effect of various herb extracts and minerals as immunopotentiator separately. In literature many plants have been listed having immunomodulatory effect and some of them have been proved to have active principles with immunomodulatory, antioxidant, analgesic, antipyretic and antimicrobial properties. The present compilation deals with some of such medicinal plants like Anethum graveolens (Sowa), Elettaria cardamomum (Bari elaichi/Cardamom), Foeniculum vulgare (Saunf), Trachyspermum ammi (Ajwain), Zingiber officinale (Sundh) and Trigonella foenun- graceum etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]