Heart failure can occur at any type of operation, at any age, and any level of altitude, according to Isabella Kukor, doctoral candidate at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Kukor gave her talk, “Heart Score Comparisons between Finished Beef and Beef on Dairy Animals,” during the 2024 Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) Symposium on June 11 in Knoxville, Tenn.
Breed percentage’s influence on the heart
Kukor first described the method of quantifying damage done to the heart of feedlot animals due to the increased pulmonary arterial pressure by assigning them a score of one through five from normal, healthy hearts to drastic morphological changes in animals that rarely make it to harvest with a score of three being the threshold for animals at risk for heart failure. The group from CSU used this method to determine the incidence rate differences between one cohort of beef cattle (Angus, Simmental, and others) and another of composite animals known as DairyX (Holstein, Jersey, Angus, and Simmental) and investigate whether some of those breeds were more likely to develop heart failure during finishing.
By Angie Stump Denton
October 30, 2024
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