Doing 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 all cattle or cows will be subject to a series of tests that the farmers would be giving in order to know about the animal. The very first test that will be performed would be the qualitative test where in one would test mostly physical traits of the cow. One would test the cow for defects in areas like hair color, presence of horns, body shape and such.

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.

Now what some farms do is that they use sampling kits in order to test the animals that they are raising before they send it off to get killed and served later as meat produce. Now there are a lot of labs that offer kits like this so that farmers will know if their cattle are healthy or not. Of course these kits come complete with an instruction manual that one may use when sampling.

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 one would take note that when a cow is still very young, it will not have fully developed hair yet. In the situation, the more accurate but harder thing to do would be to get a blood sample instead and get some of the DNA from there. This can be done so that one will not need to do hair sampling.

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.

It is very important to make sure that the cattle is extremely healthy before it is turned into beef so that it does not carry any body disorders. By making sure that each cow goes through a beef cattle genetics test, it is possible to know which meat will be suitable to consume and which are not. From there, farmers will also have an easier time with their job.




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