Building Better Calves

Building Better Calves

Susan Allen
Susan Allen

 

I’m Susan Allen welcome to Open Range. Now how in the world can  human pregnancies help us raise better beef cattle?  I’ll be back with the answer after the  break. Did you know that pregnant women whose bodies are either in a starvation mode or obsess have a direct impact on the health and development of the fetus. Researchers discovered this  during the Dutch famine when many woman consumed only 500-600 calories a day their offspring had problems with diabetes, metabolic syndrome and oddly obesity and the same holds true of children with obese mothers. With this in mind a  group of South Dakota State University researchers hope to use fetal programming through monitoring the cows diet, most notably through the critical second trimester to develop calves that build better muscle and marbling. The USDA thinks the team’s is onto something and recently awarded them $320,000 on the merit of the results of the  first stage of the study where three groups of heifers were fed high intermediate and low levels of nutrition. University researchers analyzed fetus growth and discovered that despite major nutritional differences the fetus were about the same size meaning despite different feed the heifer’s body provided  each calf what it needed. Ah but size isn’ everything the USDA was intrigued by the fact that while nearly the same size , the fetus’s had different muscle and fat make up leading the research team to reason that a cows nutrition plays an important role on the composition of the calf. In theory prenatal health could greatly impact post –natal development. I’m Susan Allen  

I'm  Susan Allen

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