mercredi 27 novembre 2013

The Skinny On Beef Cattle Genetics Tests

By Susan Dawson


When farmers raise cattle in order for these animals to be turned into meat later on, it is always very crucial for them to perform some beef cattle genetics tests. Now the main reason as to why these tests have to be performed to simply check whether the animal to be slaughtered would have some irregularities in it. That way, farmers will know which of their livestock will be healthy enough to be turned into consumable meat.

Now the first thing that these animals would have to go through would be a qualitative test where in they are tested based on the quality of their traits. Now the qualitative test will actually check for things like hair color, hair texture, horns, body shape or other types of physical traits. This will check to see if there are any kinds of deformities.

The next test is known as the quantitative test which will measure certain things about the animal that can be calculated in numbers. Things like weight, amount of fat, and the amount of certain nutrients in the body of a cattle will really be measured. This is to ensure that all the statistics meet the standards of its manufacturer.

One of the most common ways to conduct tests would actually be through sampling of the DNA of the animal and test it for anything that may seem out of the ordinary. The good thing is that a lot of labs actually give farmers kits where in they would be able to test their animals. These kits are rather easy to use and will not take a long time to understand.

The easiest method of sampling would actually be hair sampling. All this takes is just pulling out some hair from the tail of a cow and extracting a small piece of DNA from that tiny strand of hair. He just has to follow the steps that the instruction manual of the kit tells him to do.

Now do remember that this type of sampling is not applicable to young calves simply because the hair of the young animals have not fully developed yet. Because of this, then only thing to do is to simply get a blood sample. With the blood sample, one will also be able to extract a strand of DNA.

Do take note that it is much harder to draw blood from an animal instead of plucking out a few hairs. One would still need to inject the needle into the body of the animal, and start drawing out the blood. Once that is done, the blood will be placed in a tube where it will be used for testing.

Take note that these tests will definitely be beneficial to farmers because they would have to check for any irregularities in the beef cattle genetics. If there are some irregularities in the body of the animal, there might be some differences in the quality of meat. Also, some genetic disorders may be given to consumers because of this.




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