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Omental Fat Score
GENERAL DISCUSSION
slaughtered cows, another interesting observation can be made compared to our data.
Whereas cows with a low BCS and a concomitantly high OFS could be found in both
healthy and LDA cows, cows with an oppositely high BCS and low OFS were not
observed in our LDA study. Further research is needed to clarify the contradiction
between the preferential mobilization of ABD fat in Chapter 4.2 and observations on
OFS. Finding non-invasive techniques to estimate OFS will be one of the most
challenging parts of future research as applicability of three-dimensional body scanning,
computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging used to assess body
composition in humans (Mattsson and Thomas, 2006) is economically not feasible in
farm animals at this moment.
5
5
4
4
3
3
2
R² = 0.5291
2
1
1
R² = 0.0407
0
0 1 2 3 4 5
0
0 1 2 3 4 5
Body Condition Score
Figure 3. Body Condition Score and Omental Fat Score of dairy cows at the moment of correction for a left abomasal
displacement (left: n=46; data from Hostens et al., 2012) and healthy cows at slaughter (right: n=74; data from Van
Eetvelde et al., 2011).
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