Enlarged Heart in goats (sorry!)

[KrystalClemmons]

Sorry to bring a goat question in, but a fellow breeder and I raise meat goats. We butcher goats all the time and always check all the organs to make sure everything looks as it should. Well, the last 4 goats we did, had really enlarged soft hearts. The valve was very big. Nothing like we had ever seen.
  Now a back story to this is in October '07 when these goats were in utero (2 month gestation) the logging company went through and took out 300 acres of trees, burned the piles and put some type of fungicide on the burning piles. For 15-21 days we couldn't see out our windows. The smoke came inside the house and caused lots of coughing. We moved a very pregnant horse to different location were she gave birth to twins, one completely healthy and dead.
  Our cows started calving in January and we had some that didn't have heads and missing flesh under the neck. I think it was around 4-6 calves we lost. We never have trouble calving. Same with the goats. Our live birth rate is usually around 99%. We keep only good mothers and easy kidders. So it has to be the smoke that caused this.
  We  butchered two yearlings that were not in gestation at the time of the smoke/fungicide and their hearts were perfect.
  We have kept 4-6 doelings from this kidding and are afraid that they too have enlarged hearts. Aside from testing I'm sure there's no way to find out.. These goats and the remaining roam acres and acres of pasture and run up and down hills and show at this time no side effects. The boys butchered were very healthy and normal growing.
  What is this enlarged heart exactly? Could it be caused by smoke and fungicide? Could it be a birth defect in 4 different goats, possibly thrown by the same dad? (same sire of all butchered goats with non-related moms)

[Brooke_38]

Not sure what to say here...If you go back to the main page of the forums, there is an area to the bottom right that has sites regarding animals. Good luck with the goats!

[ireneo]

This might be a good thing to take up with your local environmental quality office. They may be able to pin down the name of the fungicide that was used, let you know what the possible side effects would be and also let you know if your family was endangered in any way. Some things are very dangerous to developing embryos. Also, no telling how much of the stuff settled on your land and the animals may have ingested it that way as well as inhalation. I personally wouldn't try to get answers from the logging company. They'll be more concerned about protecting themselves at this stage.