Bovine Congestive Heart Failure: An Angus Issue, an Industry Issue or No Issue At All?

When there’s a challenge in the cattle business, sometimes it’s easier to point fingers than to find solutions. Bovine congestive heart failure (BCHF) has been a growing topic of discussion in the last decade, and this episode unpacks if it's a genetic problem or a management problem? And perhaps, most importantly, is it an Angus problem?

Hear from a breeder, a veterinarian and a geneticist as they uncover real-world examples and research findings to help put the pieces together. Leave with an idea of what we know and what we’re hoping to know in the future.

HOSTS: Mark McCully, Miranda Reiman and Kelli Retallick-Riley 

GUESTS:  

Randall Spare is a large animal veterinarian in southwest Kansas with a wide reach in the cow-calf sector and consulting with feedlot operations. Growing up on a Kansas dairy farm, Randall went to Kansas State University for both his undergraduate and veterinary degrees. After gaining early experience in another practice, he helped establish Ashland Veterinary Center (AVC) and has been helping producers across the state ever since.

Today he serves as president, and through dedication and teamwork, AVC has become the largest veterinary practice in southwest Kansas. Randall and his wife, Michelle, are parents to five children, Anna, Bethany, Mark, Abigail and John.

 
Darrell Stevenson, Stevenson Angus Ranch, has strong ties to the Angus breed and a history of involvement in the Montana Angus Association. Stevenson’s grandparents were charter members in 1951, and his father participated in the first National Junior Angus Showmanship contest in 1967. Stevenson was involved in 4-H and FFA, where he served as a state officer. He went to Montana State University and Oklahoma State University before returning home to the ranch near Hobson. He and his wife Sara have two children, CJ and Claire. 

Stevenson has served on the American Angus Association Board of Directors since 2020. 

Related Content: Healthy Hearts Start with Knowing More

Video: Research on Bovine Congestive Heart Failure

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Transcript

Miranda Reiman:

Welcome to the Angus Conversation, I'm your host Miranda Reiman. I have my co-host Mark McCully here today. Hey, Mark.

Mark McCully:

Hi Miranda.

Miranda Reiman:

And today we have president of Angus Genetics, Inc., Kelli Retallick-Riley. Hey, Kelli.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

Good morning, Miranda.

Miranda Reiman:

Good morning. And it's always fun to have good conversations first thing in the morning, but let me tell you it was a little bit of a rush around the Reiman household this morning.

Mark McCully:

Isn't it always a rush around the Reiman household in the morning?

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah, it is a little bit. We try to get all six kids ready in about 40 minutes or less.

Mark McCully:

Amazing.

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah. And I have really honed that efficiency over the years. But man, this morning we had a late night last night and I had been gone on a work trip, and we got up and we had no milk in the fridge, so there went our cereal plans for breakfast. And the preschooler couldn't find her shoes, and we had a track uniform still in the dryer for the track meet today. And there was a lot going on and a lot of variables contributing to our goal of getting out of the house on time. And that reminds me of the topic we're going to talk about today, bovine congestive heart failure is on the agenda. I'm going to see if you guys can follow my crazy train of thought. How do you think that could be similar to the Reimans getting out of the house in the morning?

Mark McCully:

Well, I think your goal was getting out of the house in 40 minutes, but there's a lot of variables that influence that. And I think our goal is trying to find a solution for a problem of congestive heart failure. Many of our listeners maybe it might be the first time they're hearing about this, we've talked about it and written about it, I know, but it is something that we're trying to find a solution for. But it's one of those multi-variable equations and those always trick me up. If it was a single variable equation I could solve it. But when you start adding variables these things get complicated like getting your kids out to school this morning, it was complicated.

Miranda Reiman:

Absolutely. And are you really saying you could solve it, Mark, or you mean Kelli could solve it in a single variable?

Mark McCully:

I'm talking a simple algebraic equation, not a genetic discussion here.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

I think it might take a collective effort, Mark, across more than just us three on here right now.

Miranda Reiman:

So bovine congestive heart failure, when I think back into when I first heard about it, and I know you brought it up in the podcast, Mark. For me, it was probably five, six years ago, but it was at Certified Angus Beef, and talking about it as a possible thing that consumers might be thinking about. But at that time I think I really heard, and maybe I'm still hearing that today, people are saying, "Man, this is something that's just getting to be a really big problem." I would guess that people that I hear talking about it out in the field would expect the graph to look like a pretty steep incline in number of cases, is that really the case or don't we even know?

Mark McCully:

I think we get into that in the podcast and I think reference some of that data, which I think our listeners will be sure interested in hearing about or reading about later. And we'll put links I know in the note around some of those articles. But I think it is a topic that does tend to come up quite a bit. And I think really a big goal of this podcast was to frame the topic appropriately and to make sure we give it context, it's important.

But we referenced some of that data that it's not maybe, again, not trying to disregard or sweep any topics or concerns under the rug, because for some breeders or for some feeders that have maybe dealt with this more than others, it is very real and very important, so we get into that. We get into giving it some context and framing the topic up and it's important, but maybe not as quite as prevalent I think sometimes as some conclusions have been led. I know maybe Kelli you've gotten into some of those same discussions that maybe we've misinterpreted how the impact if you will of this particular condition.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

Yeah, I think the one thing that's definitely increased, and I think both Mark we've talked about this, and Miranda we've probably talked about it at some point as we were brainstorming stories is the awareness of the issue has increased. So maybe not the prevalence of the issue, that's probably a question yet to be determined. But the awareness, it's like when you're in some of your language arts classes and they talk about you're going to go out, and you decide you want to buy a yellow car, and then all of a sudden you see all the yellow cars on the road.

Kind of one of those factors where the more we talk about it the more people are aware, and I think the more that it inks into conversations. But nonetheless, it's an exciting opportunity, I think and an exciting challenge for the industry to work together to say, "Hey, we have this issue or the awareness of this issue that's been going on for a bit, and can we work together to solve it?" And I think that's really cool and I think that's what makes us excited, all of us excited to be a part of this industry and work for it every single day.

Miranda Reiman:

I think you're absolutely right with everybody coming together, that's exciting. The one thing that I like to always note though, and in the podcast I mentioned the stats and the low incidence and those things is that if this is a challenge that you've had actually happen to you, if you've had a pen of cattle and you've had... It is absolutely a real issue and we're not downplaying that at all. I think sometimes I get excited by saying, "But it's really not that big a issue and it's not that-" Listen, if you're the one dealing with the challenge, we care about that too.

Mark McCully:

Absolutely, I'm glad you said that again because I think sometimes I get caught in feeling like I'm downplaying it. But to your point if it's influenced your bottom line, if you've dealt with some of this, there's no downplaying it. It is a solution that we need to work towards.

Miranda Reiman:

We've got some great guests on the program today, and I think everyone will really enjoy this conversation.

Mark McCully:

It's a good one.

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah, can't wait. Welcome to the podcast, it is morning. We don't often record these in the morning. And so I guess this morning will be a case of we're going to start digging right into a technical topic first thing in the morning. First guest we have on today is Dr. Randall Spare, he's president of Ashland Vet Clinic, which he helped establish after working for another vet clinic for a few years there in Southwest Kansas. Big K-State family, as I understand you guys were even KSU Family of the Year handful of years ago, maybe five, six years ago.

Randall Spare:

That's correct.

Mark McCully:

Congratulations.

Miranda Reiman:

Randall, you grew up the youngest of eight kids on a dairy farm. So I probably would surmise you know what hard work looks like and have been focusing on the beef cattle, cow-calf production basically ever since school. And you and your wife have five children, and I have to ask is one of them a vet in your practice now?

Randall Spare:

That's correct. In fact, even as you say that it puts a lump in my throat. Our third child, Dr. Mark Spare, he's a 2019 graduate and finished a PhD shortly after that, but agreed to come back and work with us and just has energized us. There's nothing more humbling than to have a son that says, "Dad, I want to do what you do." And even as I say that I get pretty emotional.

Miranda Reiman:

Well, that's excellent. I had to double check that it was indeed a son and not a nephew, because I didn't think there was any way you were old enough to have a son that was already back through med school and all the above.

Randall Spare:

Well, thank you very much.

Miranda Reiman:

If the veterinary profession is a stressful job, you wear it well. And then moving on to Darrell Stevenson, we got Darrell up early this morning there in Montana, or perhaps he's always up this early. But joining us extra early outside of normal business hours from Stevenson Angus Ranch there at Hobson, born and raised there, came up through the Angus program. A tidbit I learned when researching you is that you were a state FFA officer. I don't know why I didn't know that Darrell, is that right?

Darrell Stevenson:

Yes ma'am, a big FFA family, yes.

Miranda Reiman:

Excellent, it's near and dear to my heart. We just finished our Nebraska State FFA Convention and I've got kids just starting to get involved in that program, so excellent. Graduated from Montana State University, you're one of the four children involved in the Keith Stevenson branch of the family. I have to mention that because there are a few Stevensons there in Montana, do I have that right, even the lineage right and the...

Darrell Stevenson:

You do, yes, correct. My family operation would've been started by my grandparents, which is now descended into multiple entities. Several different family units that are actually seedstock breeders and register a lot of Angus cattle today.

Miranda Reiman:

And you and your wife Sara have two children CJ and Claire, and we've gotten to know you quite a bit more as a Angus board member. I didn't look up the number of years you've been on the board, Darrell, but you're one of the seasoned board members.

Darrell Stevenson:

Seasoned board members, I haven't been there that long, but that's the way that the calendar does lie, yes, you are correct, so good intro. No, very proud of my family history, and obviously my children and what they're doing, and a pleasure to be here today.

Mark McCully:

Like all conversations start, we started this morning talking about the weather, and Darrell you were showing us the inches of snow that you got outside your window. And Randall was talking about how Western Kansas could use a little moisture. But Darrell, you still got some winter up there?

Darrell Stevenson:

Yeah, actually when we started this I was making sure that I put another log on the fire because it's chilly this morning, probably 15 degrees. We got another 12 to 14 inches in the last 24 hours, and I'm trying to calve through this stuff. So optimistically, really appreciate the moisture because I know there's some parts of the country that are desperately in need. And to be honest, we need it as well too because we've been in a two or three year drought situation for our production sector. So it's most needed, but winter and spring are obviously battling it out. And I'm not quite sure who's going to win, but I'd like some sunshine here shortly.

Miranda Reiman:

And I bet you could do with a little less wind, Dr. Spare.

Randall Spare:

Yeah, the last few days, in fact, night before last I was woke up in the middle of the night, and just heard the wind blowing and dirt was blowing, and I looked outside and trash cans had been blowing around. And I had talked to a fireman that was up in the middle of the night going to fight a fire, and he said that when he was out about 2:00 in the morning it was so dirty they had to put their dim lights on as they drove. So we're pretty sensitive to fires in our area, but we're used to dirt blowing and we know that God will provide moisture.

In fact, next I think starting Sunday we have four or five days of rain that we've not seen for quite some time. And I think we've had about four or five inches of rain in the last calendar year, so we're still having lots of cows go to sale barns in our area. And every day my partner and I talk to two or three people about which cows to sell, which cows to move. And it's a challenging job or challenging business, but we enjoy the interaction with people, and count it a privilege to come alongside people.

Mark McCully:

I think our listeners, you guys speak to the diversity of probably what our listeners have been dealing with, it's agriculture so we're going to deal with extremes and weather and persevere through whether it's snow banks or drought, but you guys represent the extremes that we know. And you mentioned fires, I know there's several of our parts of the country that are dealing with fires and been impacted by that. So boy, our thoughts and prayers go out to that and firefighters and everybody taking care of those situations as well.

Miranda Reiman:

So let's go from one uplifting topic like drought and fires, to another uplifting topic like bovine congestive heart failure.

Mark McCully:

It is a topic Miranda and Kelli we've... this has been a topic that we now have a name for it, bovine congestive heart failure. I would say when we first started having this discussion literally six, seven years ago, I'm not even sure we had a name for it at the time. It was some observations that were taking place in feedyards, and it typically got recognized as late feeding deads. And it was cattle that was always got characterized as cattle getting ready to get on the truck that succumbed to this heart failure. And since that time over the last six, seven, eight years, however long it's been we've probably learned quite a bit more about this topic.

We know it's a topic of definite interest to the beef industry as a whole. I would tell you when you talk to cattle feeders they tend to have a little more awareness of this topic than sometimes... well, many times our seedstock audience might have, and so that's why we wanted to dive into this. We suspect there's some genetic influences in this and we want to get into that a little bit today. And really unpack what we know, maybe what we don't know and what we're trying to find out, and so maybe we get right into that. What is bovine congestive heart failure? And since Dr. Spare you've got all that education, those letters after your name, it's probably most appropriate you answer that question for us.

Randall Spare:

Well, that's important and I can appreciate the fact that we do have a diagnosis now. So many people wanted to say, "Well, it's late day deads, it's this, it's that." And I think we still have to continue to define that what is that case definition? And many feedyards and the reason it creates anxiety is when does it occur? Well, today those animals are worth $3,000 or 2,700 to 3000 and add $1.80 fat cattle, and then we add any premium on there and that creates the anxiety that, "Well, my goodness these cattle just want to die."

And a few create a challenge, so what is that bovine congestive heart failure? It's basically finding some sort of defect in the heart or pathology at necropsy, that indicates there's some form of heart failure. Now I think that's the term that is used and I still think that needs to be defined more. I visited with one large consulting group of veterinarians and they looked back on their 2022 data. And those cattle that died in the last 60 days feeding, there was 623 heart failure deaths in the last 60 days of feeding with over 4.8 million cattle on feed. So those are the kind of pieces of information that we have to continue to define, and listen well to those producers that buy those cattle to feed out.

The Angus industry's really enjoying a tremendous benefit in the feeding sector with large numbers of CAB cattle. And there's challenges and whenever we have something good happening we've probably created some challenges. And I applaud you for looking at that and saying, "Let's continue to ask our people to define that problem a little more specifically." Because I work with some seedstock producers and they retain ownership, and they're definitely interested in that. And so I think that we need to continue to define that problem, that challenge. And I want to say it's a challenge, not a problem. I think there's an opportunity here.

Mark McCully:

Dr. Spare you mentioned necropsies and I guess for, again, so many of our listeners that don't probably live in the feedlot world every day, and so thinking about that. Because you mentioned about the diagnosis, and I think this is something we've had a lot of conversation on, and my sense is the industry has come quite a ways on this. It felt like for a while that, and I think it's called observational bias, it's like when you go buy a black truck and then next thing you show up and it seems like everybody's got a black truck. Well, nothing probably changed, it's an observational bias. And I've heard that said many times for those that pretty soon every animal that died, "Well, it was heart failure." And so I guess speak to that of how does that diagnosis work, and to your feedlots that you're working with or you're consulting with, how frequent are necropsies done? Is the diagnosis, is the early diagnosis advanced quite a bit from when we first started? Maybe speak to that just a little bit.

Randall Spare:

And I think that's a good question Mark, because there was so much of those times that when you have a dead animal and you say, "Well, it's a heart failure because it has an enlarged brisket," that's the starting point of something got lumped in there. Or you diagnose it with the fact that you don't have any lung pathology, and you can't find any other reasons of death, "Well, it's got to be a heart problem." And we've evolved from that to training veterinarians, feed yard cowboys that do those diagnosing to look for specific problems. A lot of times even those people they may have not gone to college, there may be a language barrier, but they really buy into, "What is this diagnosis?"

Because they want to get a little better every day in what they do. And then we look at size of the heart, we look at the influence of backup of fluid in the rest of the animal. And we can become pretty specific in that diagnosis when we don't find other lung pathology, because that's still the major cause of death in feedyards. And is that lung pathology something that's caused by heart failure? And so the specifics of those diagnosis are becoming a little more we're looking for them. And it's not like we have a pristine environment to do a necropsy. Sometimes the wind's blowing, the carcasses are frozen, the challenges of the environment to do those diagnosis. And also, if you have a day like yesterday, it was 92 degrees, today that animal may not be so easy to do a necropsy on to find the specific problems. So you have to be there at that specific time to do that, so those are the challenges of making that diagnosis.

And I think that as an industry we are becoming a little more astute, and a little more specific in working to find that and go back in defining did this animal die from bovine congestive heart failure? There's other causes of heart failure that are infectious. Histophilus causes an acute death in the feed yard, and you find an abscess in the heart or a lesion that is specific to that disease, it's pathognomonic just to that bacteria, and you've got to rule that out. Is that part of the way we lump that all together? And we need to continue to ask our people, "Let's define that. Let's make sure that we're correct."

Miranda Reiman:

We're going to talk a little bit later on here about some research that Kansas State University did. And I think even the challenge that they noted in researching that was the number of different ways people are inputting it into their system, they had something like, what was it? 10 to 15 different definitions to try to sort out, is this bovine congestive heart failure. And if so, we've got to at least even name it the same thing for the purposes of studying it. So Darrell, as we think about the conversations that you've had with breeders, different folks in the Angus business, how well understood do you think this topic is among breeders or what are they calling bovine congestive heart failure? What do they think when they hear the term bovine congestive heart failure?

Darrell Stevenson:

Well, I'm actually very pleased that you started the path of this conversation with the DVM on the Zoom because his explanation is superb from the scientifics perspective, and focusing specifically on the conversation today for bovine congestive heart failure. But to open this conversation up a little bit more, I'm actually going to start with another issue of concern that I'm very curious, or interested if this ends up tying in with high altitude disease or brisket disease. And so from my customers and my neighbors in the greater Mountain West area.

A little background, high altitude disease would've been first diagnosed over a 100 years ago actually, and there was no foundation for many, many years or decades onto exactly what was happening. And I'm not going to claim that I'm 100% accurate on these statistics, but to my knowledge until the late '80s and then into the '90s with specifically Dr. Tim Holt in Colorado State was there any ability to actually get on this issue of concern. And since then through PAP testing specifically, this singularly was the only method to be able to test and identify these cattle which have a better likelihood to survive at altitudes. And when I speak to altitudes, it really could be 5,000 feet and above. More than likely it's going to be 6,000 feet and above. And there's a lot of producers that would sum a range at eight or 9,000 feet. Similarly, this ends up being an issue, a heart concern issue.

And to my knowledge there really was no correlation to this dropsy or congestive heart failure. In fact, some of the scientific community was declaring that there was no connection. And deep down with me and my cowboy logic, I guess I want to say that I find it hard to believe that the vesicular breakdown or the issues with the heart, there wouldn't be some correlations. And so you asked me what the production sector talks about. Well, in my region it's more to high altitude. But then alternatively to that I have customers, I have friends, we have feedyard owners that own these cattle. And congestive heart failure is not a new thing as well.

This has been a quiet topic of conversation in my life for at least 10 years. And definitively there is death loss, some more in some areas than not. And I'm very pleased that this conversation has come to the forefront from the American Angus Association standpoint, from the science community in academia, from the feedyards, the collaborative effort that we have in moving forward on trying to identify these issues of concern, I think is a benefit to the industry as a whole. I speak to two points initially, high altitude disease and congestive heart failure. But in a dream world is there a holy grail here in the fact that a healthier heart could potentially improve general health, which would be quite obvious and in that ultimately feed efficiency. So I do believe that efforts moving forward on these research projects are big, they're huge.

They're wide sweeping in the fact that this doesn't just affect people that live over 6,000 feet, this is a nationwide concern and an entire industry concern, and not only in Angus cattle. This is across the industry as a whole. So you know me well enough, Miranda, when you ask a question sometimes the answers aren't very short. I guess I prefer to open the conversation up even further with those points of consideration.

Mark McCully:

Well, and I think Darrell from your standpoint and breeder's standpoint, I do think the two topics do very quickly get connected. And I think maybe Kelli speak to that a little bit because I know you get that question a lot. Is PAP and the PAP EPD that we have is selection using that tool, is that going to be an indicator of bovine congestive heart failure or do we even know yet? Maybe tease those two topics apart or put them together.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

Yeah, I think that's interesting. Darrell, I think your comments are... especially with someone who's living it, are fairly solid. When you think about these two high altitude disease and then this non-infectious bovine congestive heart failure, that we have been focusing on through some of our research at Kansas State University and with other groups you got to think, "Okay, well they're both heart failure." And I think the real answer to the question is, "Well, they're definitely connected or they're definitely not connected." The real answer is we just don't know yet. We haven't been able to really parse that information apart. Now Colorado State University has been basically testing cattle at high elevations and then taking those cattle into feed yards and seeing is there a correlation. And they would say they would see some trend, but also then you go back to is it the chicken or the egg?

Did they test high for PAP and then go to lower elevations because they already had been under that stressful environment in what happened first in what led to which death? I do know that Dr. Greta Krafsur at UC Denver has been really interested in this topic from a human health perspective, and using specifically the PAP model in high altitude disease to actually look at heart failure in humans. And obviously when this conversation started and really ramped up back prior to 2018 in that region, she was really one who focused on the histology and the pathology. And there were some things that came out of some of that research where is it left-sided heart failure versus right-sided heart failure and some of the differences there. And so I would say that the research community in general, from the individuals that I get to interact with the jury's still out.

I think having larger data sets, being able to collect heart remodeling scores, and really being able to focus on this at a more of a micro level are going to help us distinguish. But I don't blame breeders for trying to make that association. You have two groups of cattle that are both dying of heart failure, both sometimes even seeing some of the same preclinical signs from that standpoint. We have some brisket edema, extended jugulars, and then when you open those cattle up some pretty severe heart remodeling.

And so from that standpoint as we gather more and more data, the great thing about what we're trying to do at Angus is the idea that, hey, people like Darrell, a lot of individuals that Randall works with that send in data to us, we're going to be able to look at some of those correlations. We're going to be able to look and see, hey, do we have persistent sire lines? Is there any genetic component? Do we have persistent sire lines that show these characteristics? Is there a correlation between these two types of phenotypes? And really start to try and help the industry with some of these questions that obviously we've had for a few years now.

Mark McCully:

We talk about the importance of this topic, and I don't want to miss, and I know no one on this call would disagree with me. Obviously, this has a production issue and a production economics that we're all very concerned about. But I'll be honest, probably where this first hit our radar I was back at Certified Angus Beef at the time, is what does this mean from a consumer perception as they think about animal welfare? Is this something that we're doing and doing meaning through genetics, through management, through however we're handling these animals that's putting them at a higher susceptibility for this heart failure? And that obviously from a consumer standpoint would be quite alarming. And so I think on all fronts this is a really, really important topic.

And I think our approach at Angus, and we'll get into this maybe a little bit later, Darrell, I think from a board standpoint and from us, and Kelli from the research side. And what we're doing is let's go at this, let's let the data lead us down the path. Let's understand what we know, what we don't know. It's pretty quick sometimes to jump to some assumptions. And again, it's one of the roles I think as a breed because we do have a sizable market share of the genetic contribution. So any industry issue we have responsibility in that to figure that out, and what is the linkage to genetics? What's the linkage to the Angus breed? And how do we get better? How do we get down that road and find some solutions?

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

I think that's a pretty good point, Mark. And I think before we dive too deep in this, I think it's important just to remind ourselves, we hear about it a lot. Especially in the genetic circles we talk about it a lot because quite honestly it's exciting for us to say, "Oh, this could be a potential heart related outcome." Or a health related outcome that, "Hey, genetics, we actually might be able to pinpoint something and create a tool for." And so as geneticists that geeks us out, makes us super excited. But at the same token when you really start to put the pen to paper, and when we initially started this conversation, Mark, you'll remember when you were at CAB and I was at AGI and we all huddled in a room and we said, "We got to figure out what's our stance and how do we need to go about it." And the first thing, like you said, "We got to learn what the data says."

And so that large retrospective analyses that we would've done. In general, Miranda, I remember writing a story a few months ago right under the headline was that less than 1% of these four and a half million cattle that we looked at that were placed on feed are dying from non-infectious bovine congestive heart failure. And so I think just to put it in perspective because we're going to talk a lot about it over the next half hour or so, that it is an important issue, it is an issue. But at the same time, in that same study that we looked at 43% of those cattle were dying of BRD. Of the cattle that died 43% of the cattle died of BRD and only 4% died of non-infectious heart disease. So we just got to make sure that our perspective's clear I think as we enter into this conversation.

Miranda Reiman:

That's right, that number becomes six or seven in 10,000 or up to 15 if you include those that maybe had some form of heart challenges but just didn't succumb to them. So that to me 4%, but six or seven in 10,000 is, it just puts it in perspective. I was going to say it's not nothing because if the six or seven are ones you owned, that's a big deal.

Mark McCully:

And I think as we've talked about this from a genetic standpoint, truly the responsibility I think is if there is a genetic component of this and it is something that is... that there's a trend here. And if we're going the wrong direction with this, then we need to understand that and make sure we course correct.

Randall Spare:

Let's go back and talk about context and that's what you've done is in this conversation is the context of this disease or this syndrome. I've been out of veterinary school since 1986 and I was thinking about those cattle that were finished in 1990, they probably weighed 1,050 as a heifer 1,200 if it was a steer. And they would often would go on feed and maybe it's 600 pounds, maybe 800, but no one liked to buy a feeder animal that was over 800 pounds. And so today what's happening, we have animals that go on feed at 850 to a 1,000 pounds and they're fed to 1,600 pounds. And that's the carrot that's been presented to us and we've got to look at how long those cattle are on feed. And also understand that nutritionists and those feedyards get paid by... or their scorecard is feed efficiency, rate of gain.

And there's always a tussle between a nutritionist and a veterinarian. We always are pointing our fingers at each other and say, "It's not my fault, it's your fault." And so that being said, we've changed the animals that we're feeding today and we've changed our practices, we feed them Rumensin longer and Rumensin, it has some challenges to the heart. Does that make a difference? If you think about the amount of energy an animal consumes today compared to early mid '90s, that's changed also. So we're asking these animals to do things differently than maybe they were created for. And we have to ask ourselves, are all feedyards the same? Do they have the same challenges? Well, what's the biggest challenge in a feedyard today, it's labor. So we've created systems to feed cattle according to what the computer says, and we don't have those people that have been raised on ranches and farms that drive a feed truck and ride a horse in the feedyard, so that's changed also.

And I would say that there are feed yards that don't have the struggles with bovine congestive heart failure that bigger ones do or some sizes... it just, one size doesn't fit all. So that's our challenges collectively to come back and say, "What is the context of this challenge and what are we doing to..." Kelli, it's like you said we've got to continue to define that problem and find those people that are curious like Dr. Greta, that want to understand it on a histology level because we don't have cardiologists out in the field today that are measuring that. And when we drive through a feed yard and we're looking at 10,000 head of animals and we have one cowboy per seven or 8,000 head of cattle, and we give them tremendous responsibility. So the context of our challenge has to be defined, and we need to continue to look at that.

Miranda Reiman:

I have to laugh you said that if a veterinarian and nutritionist are pointing fingers at each other, is it if you guys can't decide then you just pointed at the geneticists, is that fair?

Randall Spare:

That's a new one, that's a great idea. And seeing Darrell there, and one of the things we have to be careful with is not to throw a particular sire line under the table. Everything brings something good to their perspective, to their situation. And I think it's so important. We went through DD and AM and there was some tremendous challenges in how those were handled, and there were some good cattle that were euthanized and thrown under the bus.

And we have to be careful that we look at this challenge globally and taking the lead on it. It's not just a black problem, a black cattle problem. And so I again applaud Angus for taking the lead and putting some money into it to research that, and continuing to challenge those people that study that. From a veterinary standpoint, let me tell you on a day that's 95 degrees and it's the afternoon, and you have a dead that happened in the morning, cardiac muscles is one of the first ones to deteriorate. And so you've got to be spot on, you got to be right there to get that heart and get it harvested, and get it sent in and formalized, so you can see the challenges.

Darrell Stevenson:

I think that's really well articulated. And I think that for your listeners, we've referenced a few times the overwhelmingly large research project that came from Kansas State, and there's three takeaways that I had from that information. And correct me if I'm wrong Kelli or Mark, but there was nearly four and a half million head of cattle that went through that. And three points to me was just referenced by Miranda that essentially on average it was six or seven head of cattle out of 10,000. We're talking 0.07% of deaths nationwide. Number two is that this is not days before or a week before harvest, this is a situation where the average timeline is at 110 days and then there's no drops or there's no increase or decrease. And the last thing which we need to continue emphasizing, is that there is no bias.

There's no significance towards sex, towards weight, towards breed of cattle. And the simple fact is that as of today over 70% of the harvested cattle in the United States are black-hided. And so the finger does like to get pointed towards our breed. And so what Dr. Spare just encapsulated is to the point that there's so much information here, that we've got to decide actually what we're actually targeting, and some of that to me is actually history.

And I think it's incredibly valid to understand that we are asking these cattle to do more with the skeletal structure that Mother Nature intended it to actually do. So to me, a big question, has the persistence rate always been a half a percent? Was it 0.05, 0.06, 10 years ago, 30 years ago or 50 years ago? Is this human induced? Is this different management systems? And so I just wanted to emphasize those points on those baseline topics that came out of K-State, because I do believe that they're invaluable for research moving forward.

Mark McCully:

I think that you framed that up well, and I think that's important. And the last thing I ever want to be accused of is trying to sweep a problem under the rug, and that by no means is what we're trying to do. It's just I think we're trying to frame up and give the topic context, so we all make sure we're going at it in a really objective way. And a smart way to identify what the problem is and how we make improvements, so appreciate that context.

Maybe to that point to that question, Darrell, just prompted us all with Dr. Spare you referenced that, when this first came out it seemed like where we first started hearing about it was some feed yards at altitude, and cattle that had probably come out of some altitude. And it seemed to be somewhat localized to some regions of the country, again, tended to be higher elevation places. More recently and over the last five, 10 years maybe we've started to hear I guess across is it that we're looking for it or to Darrell's point has it always been there, and we're just starting to recognize it and diagnose it more accurately. What's your observation, Dr. Spare?

Randall Spare:

So yes to all those, so these feed yards have gotten so proficient at what they do, they measure so many different things, and I think it's become one of the lower hanging fruits. And that's the challenge we've eliminated other death losses, is for instance much of the feedyard data says this is something simple, but whether we revaccinated implant time, how we handle cattle at implant time. We've eliminated death loss right after implanting has a benefit, but it also has a cost. So I use that as an example of these feedyards study those details. So this is an area that we've eliminated some of the other challenges. So it's become a hyper-focused idea and say, "Let's find what's causing this problem at 110 days, and let's see if we can figure that out." Because those feedyards don't like to send a dead report to say this animal died of bovine congestive heart failure.

Well, what are you doing about that? Is that my fault or your fault? And it becomes a very economic issue, but an emotional issue. I have an opportunity, I do feed some cattle. And one of the things about feeding cattle is you learn because you got little skin in the game, and you feel the pain of victory and defeat, the pain of victory or the opportunity of that success. But also I do participate in some dead slips and that gives me an understanding of what our clients are going through. And so we have to understand that those pieces, this congestive heart failure is something that we don't have an answer for. And most feedyard managers like to give an answer to their clients and say, "This is what we're doing about it." And I think that's something that we have to give them tools to do.

And I again go back to Angus, you're defining that, you have the largest database in the world for other areas of production, and I think that the PAP scores is a tremendous idea, and does that have a correlation? Are there other factors of management prior to getting into the feed yard that have a relationship? If you think about the context of cattle production today, there are 750,000 cow-calf producers in the United States, and these cattle come from every ecosystem that we can imagine. Cattle born in Montana I'm sure that none of them are born today Darrell in a snowstorm, do they receive colostrum? What is the effect of pre-feeding management have on death loss, and we don't know that. We listen to every vaccine company in the world, and I don't mean to throw them under the bus, but sometimes we listen too much to them and put too much weight on a properly vaccinated animal.

Are we over vaccinating cattle? Are we causing a problem there? How are we handling these calves at weaning time? Are those cattle that are weaning on the ranch 60, 70, 80 days and then gone to a feed yard, are they at risk more so than those cattle that are just put on a truck and weaned? Are those cattle that go through a sale barn? We need to look at the data, the complete set of data and say what pre feedyard management practices might lend to this, and accept responsibility and just don't point our finger at the feedyard and say, "Hey, it's your problem. What are you doing to mess with my cattle?" Let's all take ownership of our cattle, even though we may not own them in the feedyard. What's my responsibility from an animal welfare, Beef Quality assurance standpoint of helping our cattle succeed for the next zip code?

Miranda Reiman:

Definitely. I think in that case state study the one thing... and I don't know, Kelli, Darrell, Mark, when the results came back, it was somewhat encouraging and yet somewhat disappointing all at once. Disappointing that we couldn't say this is the one problem and this is where we go to fix it. It was somewhat encouraging that it didn't come back and say, "Oh, it's definitely an Angus problem and it's definitely this type of cattle," or something like that. But also that just helped expose the challenge in solving it even more, right?

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

Yeah, it sure did. I think when you think about this particular disease too or what we're dealing with, because there's such a low percentage of cattle succumbing to it. Such a low percentage of cattle right now that we know show these signs, it's really hard to pinpoint, "Okay, well this is the set of cattle," where to Dr. Spare's point, this is the set of cattle that we're going to go, we know it's the cattle coming out of the sale barn, we know it's the cattle that are coming in at this particular weight and having to stay on feed for this long and it's coming out of this region. And so it would've made the problem a bit more maybe singular, take some of those factors out. But basically we came back and Darrell we talked about it in our conversations afterwards with the board, we had all these myth-busters.

It wasn't just the cattle that were entering the feed yards at 850 pounds, it wasn't just the steers, it wasn't just the cattle coming off a high elevation. And then frankly, while we weren't able to parse just breed apart, we were able to parse breed type apart in one of the studies and we were able to compare native beef, versus beef on dairy, versus dairy type cattle. And they all had the same amount of non-infectious heart disease coming out of those different groups. And so from a genetic perspective, it became much harder to pinpoint, "Okay, we're going to go out and we're sub-sample this group of cattle and see if there's something different within their genotype, and see if we can't pinpoint one or two genes that are turning this thing on and off." That was probably a little bit of an altruistic thought that it was almost too simple and it turns out that it is. It was just too simple to think that that was the conclusion that we needed to make, and so now we're moving forward with other realms.

Mark McCully:

Maybe before you mentioned myth-busters, as I have conversations and over the years there does tend to be a lot of assumptions that have been either made or... Dr. Steve Miller once used the phrase biological poetry, and I've repeated it many, many times because I can speak in biological poetry, meaning this happens, this happens, this happens. All cause and effect, these things are all related and they make some sense, but they may not truly be proven to be linked. But one of the things I hear frequently is, well, it's a problem with these big performance cattle. These are the big high performance, high growth cattle. I think it ties sometimes Darrell to your... and comments that have been made has the heart kept up with the body mass that it's being asked to contribute to? Because at this point, I don't know, we know that that is in fact true. Thoughts on that Dr. Spare, Darrell, Kelli, any of you, as you've looked at the data or your observations personally, is that biological poetry or do you think that'll be part of the answer someday?

Darrell Stevenson:

In reference to your biological poetry I find it really intriguing to me that through our current research that we've opted to actually in addition to take heart scores, but then analyze liver and lungs as well. Now I'm in White Sulphur Springs Montana calving cows, and I can't give you an explanation on why they're doing that. So maybe somebody with a more science oriented education could give that reference. But I think that goes completely with the theme that you're requesting, that maybe our ultimate problem starts someplace else.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

And I think obviously when we looked at designing this project that we're doing with a lot of other industry partners, and we'll probably touch on them before the day is done. But our thought really was, "Okay, we're going to be in the plant. We're going to be really intimate with these cattle as they're moving through that harvest floor." And while our number one goal is to, "Okay, let's see how much heart remodeling is in this cohort of cattle that actually make it to the plant." Let's also take a look at how healthy their lungs and how healthy their livers are. Because I think Dr. Spare you talked about it right away at the beginning as you said, "What else is going on with these cattle?" And I think, and we've said it over and over there's still a lot to learn about this particular topic that we're discussing here today.

And so having as much information as possible, and if we have the opportunity to grab them out of the plant as we're there standing on the line, we definitely want to be able to do that. And then on top of it we're going to have DNA samples on all of these cattle. And so being able to say, okay, we can do some fancy terminology we call it gene ontology work, which is basically we can look for genes that maybe are identified as having a bit more influence on this or that. And then, okay, let's trace the pathway and see based on what we know from other species, what do these genes affect. And what proteins in the body do they affect and how do they affect that animal overall? But I would be interested to hear from Dr. Spare being the veterinarian in the group, how do you think about that? As we think about heart remodeling, obviously, you're breaking down an organ in the body. And then being able to extend that to maybe liver or lung function, probably particularly lung function as we think through this.

Randall Spare:

So even think about us as when we have a heart issue or humans have a heart problem, there's a lot of times we don't say, "Oh, my heart hurts I need to go to the cardiologist." It shows up in other organ systems, it shows up as swelling simplistically maybe in our legs, and maybe there's some liver dysfunction, and we can't exercise so maybe we have some lung pathology. When we look at a dog or a cat, I do that occasionally and I usually give it to somebody that's better at it than I do. But I do know to listen to heart murmurs, and then I do know that a dog that has cardiac failure or challenges they cough at night, they don't sleep as well, they want to sleep sitting up. So heart disease isn't a singular organ system, and we've got to learn the story that it tells us and let that animal tell us.

And as we do that, that's so important to look at the whole system so that we can say, "When is that starting to happen? Is it only a feedyard system? Is it only cattle on feed? Is that cardiac remodeling? Does it occur at a younger age?" When you have an animal that dies out on pasture and we say, "The coyotes got it, but we can't really tell what happened." Did it have congestive heart failure and it happened at a smaller age? So we don't have that benefited diagnosing that early. So that I think that idea of gathering all those organ systems, that it could be most affected by cardiac failure, and trying to piece together the story that these animals are telling us. And I tell people this and it creates accountability, and my part when somebody comes to me and says, "How come my cattle's dying? Well, why do I have this problem?"

They generally want me to give them one specific answer, "Well, it's because you have low vitamin A or you're not feeding them enough." I'm reminded about a gentleman at a diagnostic lab when I was first starting to practice and I was wanting to give that one specific answer. And he said, "Well, Randall, oftentimes it's not one thing that causes the problem, it's a myriad of issues." So I think that we as an industry have to continue to talk about other management practices that could precipitate this, that's in preventing it. But defining it continues to be the challenge. When we have a producer comes to us say, "Dadgummit, I have animals dying. What's the problem, is all this genetic?" And my ears turn red when people, the first thing I have colleagues that want to say, "Well, it's a genetic problem." And I just want to throw him a hat the ground and stomp on it because, frankly, that's an ignorant diagnosis and it's easy to jump to that.

It might be, but what else is my responsibility? And I think that's where you picking up and looking at the whole body, the whole system. And I'd like to challenge us and ask us how come we don't see this on those animals that remain out on pasture? Those cows that don't die from it but their steer mates might have had an issue, how come we don't see that? We see these heifers that are raised in confinement that are bred in confinement. We don't see death loss in those, that same death loss. So I think there's some things that management wise that might be related to how we treat them in the feedyard.

And maybe there's some things that we precipitate management-wise because of the need of the high cost of production, we've got to make every day for that animal the most efficient. I just think we've got to continue to define that more specifically. And Angus has an interest in defining that not necessarily to clear their name, but if it's you look at yourself, let's look at it straight in the mirror and say, "What am I doing to help resolve this?"

Mark McCully:

Absolutely.

Miranda Reiman:

Does that make you feel better or worse, Darrell, as a breeder?

Darrell Stevenson:

Well, I think the way that he just concluded that is incredibly important for your listeners to actually understand on how Angus is proactively engaging with this issue of concern, it is a priority. And I guess I just want to take a quick moment to just review that this isn't just a segment of Angus this is all of Angus, the data that's coming through performance programs or triple A. We are getting funding from the Angus Foundation as well as Certified Angus Beef for this massive research program. And Angus Media, API is providing as much communication and as much education as completely feasible from this podcast to the articles that are being written through the Angus Journal and Beef Bulletin and all entities of Angus is taking this actually head on. And in my opinion, I think this is an ultimate way for the American Angus Association to actually provide an ultimate service to the membership that would actually create ultimate value across every segment of the industry, starting with the seedstock, commercial and then finally at the feeding level.

This is a topic of conversation that's drifting, that's floating that people are learning from. But I guess from my perspective I would like the membership to know and your listener base to know that this is being tackled head on. And I'm actually quite optimistic about this opportunity moving forward. Because ultimately in my dream world, wouldn't it be nice if genetically we could identify something to create a tool to use in our breeding programs, through an index or a dollar value to help improve this trait moving forward, so I think we've identified that there's a bigger problem. There's a lot of work moving forward, but I think that I can speak firsthand and say that I think Angus is doing its part to tackle this concern.

Mark McCully:

Kelli, you maybe want to speak a little to that specifically. We've talked about this retrospective analysis that K-State, and again, we help fund that and initiate some of that, and maybe speak a little bit of some of the other plans that are underway.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

Yeah, like Miranda you said before we had no real aha probably moments out of that retrospective analysis, then that made us retool and think, "Okay, what's our next steps as Angus?" If there is an underlying genetic component, no matter how small it is or large it is, we want to find that out for American Angus Association members because when they make a change, it's a change for the beef industry, Darrell, to your point. And so what we started to look at were several different research papers, research work that was coming out of Colorado State University. Obviously, we spoke about PAP EPD earlier on in the podcast, and that would've been a tool we would've worked on with Colorado State when that individual genetic tool came on board.

And what Dr. Tim Holt and others like Dr. Mark Enns from their genetic department, Dr. Greta Krafsur that was working on congestive heart failure. They had come up with a scoring system and it's basically a scoring system to measure the degree of heart remodeling that is taking place on those hearts. And so not only is that intriguing because now when Dr. Spare to your point a calf dies at the feedyard and we want to open them up in necropsy, we have that scale to be able to say, "Okay, where in the scale does this individual heart fall in terms of how much heart remodeling has taken place?"

But it's one of those tools where we can get into the plant and we can fairly quickly without slowing down the pace of commerce inside of those plants, stand on that line and score these hearts as they're rolling a rolling across. And so what we're going to do is basically get in the plant, we have a goal up to collect at least 5,000 heart scores just to get us started out, and really start to look at some different genetic parameters.

And the one thing we knew we would have to do is we'd have to go to the greater industry. Our American Angus Association members are awesome from an AGI standpoint, when we want to go do research, they collect the data. Darrell, you guys aren't going to be able to collect this data by yourself. And so we went out into the industry and we're so excited to be working with some of these partners. We had mentioned all the entities CAB, the Foundation, the Association, Angus Media, AGI, but we actually went out and reinvigorated our partnership with Colorado State. I think they're going to be really useful in this conversation, especially with some of the work that they had already started to publish. Obviously, we're going to work with the Meat Animal Research Center, with USDA. But then we're also working with groups like Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, where obviously they're feeding large cohorts of Angus influenced, Angus sired cattle that they have really good access to the plants there, that allows us to get in and out because logistically this is not an easy one to do.

So having these partnerships really allows us to make sure that we can get the data collected that we need. And then we also had Cargill step up and say, "Hey, both from a monetary standpoint and a support standpoint, if you need to get into our plants let us know, we'll work with you. And also by the way we're going to kick in some money because we know that this is important to the industry." And so I think that really just goes to show the relevance that this question has, one. And two, the support that Angus has in the industry to say, "Hey, we want to step up and we want to help individuals that are breeding Angus Genetics using Angus Genetics, try to figure this thing out and try to understand a little bit more about this."

And so we're super excited. The first question Mark that we're going to answer that I always remind people is, first we got to answer is it genetic? Once we answer that, and if the answer is yes, then we can move on. And to Darrell's point, see is there some sort of genetic tool for heart health? This is what we call our heart health initiative. And then the third thing is depending if or how much of a genetic component has back to your point Dr. Spare, how can we help the industry from other management situations? All the research that I've seen so far would indicate that there could be a bit of a underlying genetic component, but it's not a heritability of 1, this isn't 100% controlled by genetics.

And so that means to us that obviously there is a lot of other environmental and management factors that are going to influence this. And so, obviously, Mark we talk a lot about in here what is Angus good at? We're pretty okay at building genetic tools and running genetic evaluations, and so we like to think so at least. And so this is the part that we're going to try and maintain our focus on. And then being able to offshoot and work with other industry partners, hopefully continue to help provide answers and provide maybe more questions than anything to the rest of the industry to say, "Hey, what is the rest of the story?"

Randall Spare:

Kelli, I think what you've communicated there helps us understand what you're doing. Because we often think about a genetic problem, and what was it back in 2008 and '09 when the bovine genome was mapped out and the first thing we found was AM, and that was a singular problem. So many people in the industry today that's the gold standard, they have in mind, "Well, there's got to be one chromosome that's off that's causing this challenge," and it's all communicating. It may be a longer snippet that might be of the problem, it might be something bigger than just one thing.

Look at what the dairy industry's done, they have plenty of their own genetic defects and they know about it way before the beef industry and they just breed around it. We don't need to throw everything out as we find this. Let's work and the tools that we have today are actually more robust than 2008 and '09, for you to help define that challenge and that problem. I think we need to continue to celebrate and champion the Angus genetics. And I know I have producers that have other breeds, but you've made tremendous inroads into consumer acceptance through CAB, and it's actually helped those other breeds. This is a bovine challenge, and you taking and creating that lead in that research, I applaud the Angus Association for that.

Mark McCully:

What I get really excited about the approach is you mentioned this heart scoring system and it's a one through five. Because I think we've been tending to think about this in a binary fashion, if you will, did the animal live, did the animal not live? And what I hope we might learn is there's some cattle that maybe never show any symptoms of a bovine congestive heart condition, but their performance is, maybe they're a three or a four on the heart scale. The animal lives to harvest and we never really understand that there was maybe a challenge there, that that animal is not obviously probably gaining very well or converting very well, or any of the things that are economically important from a production standpoint. So if we're able to start identifying that and whether it's a heart health, a heart resiliency, however that might play out, that's my hope as we ultimately start finding these cattle that tend to have or be less susceptible.

And I think you make a great point Dr. Spare of the tools we have available today. And I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, Kelli, we're thinking this is polygenics is that the term you've taught me to use, that it's multiple genes, it's probably not a genetic condition is likely what we're thinking. It's going to be controlled by many genes. But if we can identify those cattle that are less susceptible or have healthier hearts, maybe that's explaining some of what we're seeing from a performance standpoint or an efficiency standpoint. So just, again, probably more questions than answers still on this topic, but when you start thinking about what could be and what we could learn, and how we could get better through this research and continued research, it gets pretty exciting.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And polygenic, that was correct. Good job, Mark.

Mark McCully:

Yes.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

But that's a lot like-

Mark McCully:

Gold star for the day.

Kelli Retallick-Riley:

That's a lot like all of our other performance and production traits. Weaning weight is not controlled by a singular gene. Marbling is not controlled by a singular gene. And so really trying to parse those questions apart. And we were able to spend quite a bit of time with Colorado State University. And some of their early work suggest exactly what you just said, that, hey, even though these cattle are making it to the plant, they're not showing signs of bovine congestive heart failure, things like that. They do have a little bit of a difference in production and performance in the feedyard, and those are the questions that obviously can have an economic impact as well.

Miranda Reiman:

Speaking of more questions than answers I want to be respectful of everybody's time here before I jump into a random question of the week. Is there any last questions that we think we have to answer before we consider this initial discussion on the topic complete for today?

Mark McCully:

Maybe I'd love to hear Randall and Darrell both, maybe just speak to how you guys see this playing out. And maybe what from each of your perspectives maybe what you're most encouraged about and biggest questions you're looking forward to getting answered.

Randall Spare:

I like the word I learned today polygenic, I want to learn something a little bit every day. Maybe this is my simplistic way of thinking that sometimes when I'm diagnosing something and I want to give a client an answer and I can't say this is what it is, but I can say this is what it's not. That's one of the things that I think is take home that I've learned in this discussion, and the amount of effort and the thought that you all have put into it, Kelli. Those walls are pretty blank, so they don't give you any pictures to daydream about in your office there, so you have to think about just that. And I think that just being diligent and continuing to look for those answers is so important. And that takes these people that make tremendous investments in these Angus Genetics, they can go forward and make a living with it and feed the world with some of the best tasting protein there is.

Mark McCully:

Darrell, any closing thoughts on this topic?

Darrell Stevenson:

We've covered much of the subject. So in general, I'm just very pleased that we the industry and Angus specifically are proactively engaging in this. As I mentioned earlier, I think this is potentially a three-pronged approach, that it's not just bovine congestive heart failure, but it might have some outreach to high altitude and PAP. And I think we will be overwhelmed with results in general cattle health and general feed efficiency if we can actually narrow this down. So I applaud all of academia and the science community that are working together on this, the collaborative effort from multiple segments in the industry, and I'm very proud to be part of the Angus Association and being part of this.

Randall Spare:

One last comment I would have along those lines Darrell is just the transparency of the Angus board in communicating this. And it's so important to continue to take ownership of it so it doesn't become been driven economically by a particular genetic test. And the Angus industry's understanding of that is it takes a collaborative approach. It invigorates me as I go out to test some more Angus bulls today that we're all doing the right thing. We're all going to get a little better every day, that's our goal.

Darrell Stevenson:

And if I had one request for your listeners is to ask questions. I'm sure one of the intents of this podcast is to educate and you can clearly see that we don't have all the answers. And so it is talk to an Association person, fellow breeders, your customers. The more this becomes a topic of conversation I think the easier understood it is in moving forward for everybody, for not only the research but potential implementation down the road, so please please ask questions.

Miranda Reiman:

That's absolutely right, Darrell, as we think of future... Oftentimes we'll put something out that the Association's working on in a story, but what the future follow-up stories are almost always come from questions that we hear breeders ask and I say, "I don't know the answer, either. We'll go find out and we'll report back." So we appreciate that. We always end this on a random question of the week, and we've covered a lot of heavy stuff here. So I wanted to flip it a little bit. As those of you guys as animal caretakers, I want to know about a time that you... you're always happy when you save one. But I want to know about a good health outcome when you were like, "This is the day that I know I was doing what I was meant to do." Randall, I bet you've got a lot of those.

Randall Spare:

And actually I get a little bit of emotional, so I've practiced here in Ashland since 1990. And one of my favorite things to do when my kids were young, and I have five kids ages 25 to 34 was to do a Caesarean on a calf or a cow and get a live calf. And I have a picture of my mind of my youngest son in cowboy boots put on the wrong feet in shorts in the wintertime, sitting on top of a calf rubbing it off. To me, there's nothing better than to save a newborn via Caesarean. We actually do less of those today, but that's a good feel moment that I have because I'm involved with what I do, save the life. I helped a person and involve my children, and now they're passing that on to the next generation.

Miranda Reiman:

That's cool.

Mark McCully:

Awesome.

Miranda Reiman:

That's going to be hard to top, Darrell.

Darrell Stevenson:

Yeah. Well, you left it pretty wide open and so I'm going to do a very basic answer in mating decisions actually. For instance, it's a very difficult, complicated process to select the right donor cow. And to me it's about building better females beyond that. And so the amount of time and research that it takes to build a better generation is just so fulfilling to me when you can make better daughters, when you can improve feed structure, when you can improve odors or docility, it takes a long time. But those that are involved in this business know exactly what I mean. The success rates don't happen every day, and when you see that happen there's some real humility in it.

Miranda Reiman:

Any other closing thoughts? I guess Kelli, Mark, you're welcome to throw in yours, but I know we've got a additional meetings we're headed to this morning.

Mark McCully:

The thing I would throw out and you referenced it Randall, and I've often said January, February, March, my winter months, blizzards, I wish I could share my social media feed. I know what I'm seeing is lots and lots of pictures of newborn calves or kitchens full of newborn calves, or bathtubs, or trucks and heated seats, and just that care that goes into, again, calving cows and rough conditions and all of that. I wish I could take my social media feed and put it in front of the everyday consumer walking down the streets of LA or New York City that they could see that. I'm always just so proud to see that and just reminded of the great work that our members and the cattlemen do each and every day. And the above and beyond to take care of an animal that just people don't... the average consumer just has absolutely no clue about. So someday I'm going to figure out how I can take my social media feed share and get it out to the consuming public.

Miranda Reiman:

Okay, good. Well, thank you-

Mark McCully:

Thank you.

Miranda Reiman:

... guys for taking the time to visit with us, for continuing to be part of the solution on this and continuing to help us communicate. We really appreciate it. If you want to know more about this topic you're going to want to check out those show notes, for links to stories and videos that will tell you more. As we start winding down on season two, we've taken a lot of feedback from you our listeners, and I think we've got some really fun ones lined up. So if you're not already go ahead and hit subscribe in your favorite podcast platform to make sure you never miss an episode. We know your time is valuable. Thanks for spending it with us today on the Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.