During the least 10 years, there have been increasing problems with heavy feedlot cattle suddenly dropping dead. This is due to congestive heart failure. In the past, this problem was limited to cattle residing in high altitudes and did not occur at lower altitudes. It was called brisket disease because the brisket would become swollen with fluid. The most recent research shows that congestive heart failure is related to intensive selection for economically important traits such as rapid growth and meat production.

Colorado State University (CSU) researchers Isabella M. Kukor, Timothy Holt, and their colleagues inspected herds of feedlot cattle at a processing plant. Sixty-six percent had normal hearts and 34% had signs of heart problems. When hearts are inspected on the viscera table, the signs of congestive heart failure are swelling of the heart. Cattle that are in end-stage heart failure have a heart that looks like a bloated soccer ball. The CSU researchers also found that heart failure was related to certain Angus sires. Their paper was published in Translational Animal Science, Vol. 5, Supplement S1, December 2021.

Recently, I talked to managers who fed Angus-Holstein cross steers (beef on dairy) and they have traced late-stage deads back to single sires. When they stopped using the semen from a single sire, late-stage deads were drastically reduced. Cattle that are in end-stage congestive heart failure will often appear to have pneumonia.

A huge study was conducted by Justin W. Buchanan from Simplot and colleagues from Gencove Genetics. They inspected the hearts of over 32,000 feedlot cattle. Eighty percent of the cattle had normal hearts and 4.14% were in end-stage congestive heart failure. In a paper they published in 2023 in Frontiers in Genetics, they reported that Angus cattle had a higher incidence of congestive heart failure.

Congestive heart failure is scored with a five-point scoring system where a score of 1 is normal and 5 is a bloated soccer ball. Both research studies contain easy-to-use photographic scoring tools for scoring cattle at the plant. They can be easily found online by typing keywords: “beef cattle congestive heart failure” into either Google images or Google Scholar.

Tim Holt, DVM, at CSU assesses susceptibility to heart failure using a pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) test. This can be used to test Angus bulls. It could also be used to find sires that would be less susceptible. This will probably require a slight reduction in genetic selection for traits such as rapid weight gain and marbling.