Best loop for counting down a variable after an action

The title may not do justice to my question, however, would a for loop be the best for the following:

The player walks up to a tree, right clicks on it to show a menu, he clicks chop tree, which will start a loop animation of the player chopping a tree. As there are a few different trees, I have a variable of 'swingsToDestroy'. I need to decrease this value by 1 every time the axe hits the tree (a certain keyframe as this could be mid animation) to make it more fluid until it reaches 0 (from 5 for example), to which I will then call the Destroy, Instantiate the loot and stop the animation looping, going back to the idle.

My main question is which route would be the best way to go about this.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

To elaborate, the following i have so far is:

 public class Tree : monobehaviour 
 {
     public string treeType;
     public int swingsToDestroy;
 
     public void ChopTree()
     {
         if(treeType == "Oak Tree")
         {
             //play swing animation x times for swingsToDestroy.
             //each swing animation hit (at certain key frame) deduct 1 from swingsToDestroy.
             //when swingsToDestroy = 0, destroy tree.
             //spawn loot items: 8 x leaves, 6 x sticks and 4 x logs, with a 20% chance of acorn.
         }
         else if (treeType == "pineTree")
         {
             //play swing animation x times for swingsToDestroy.
             //each swing animation hit (at certain key frame) deduct 1 from swingsToDestroy.
             //when swingsToDestroy = 0, destroy tree.
             //spawn loot items: 8 x leaves, 6 x sticks and 4 x logs, with a 20% chance of pine cone.
         }
         else if (treeType == "")
         {
             //play swing animation x times for swingsToDestroy.
             //each swing animation hit (at certain key frame) deduct 1 from swingsToDestroy.
             //when swingsToDestroy = 0, destroy tree.
             //spawn loot items: 8 x leaves, 6 x sticks and 4 x logs, with a 20% chance of pine cone.
         } 
         else if (treeType == "")
         {
             //play swing animation x times for swingsToDestroy.
             //each swing animation hit (at certain key frame) deduct 1 from swingsToDestroy.
             //when swingsToDestroy = 0, destroy tree.
             //spawn loot items: 8 x leaves, 6 x sticks and 4 x logs, with a 20% chance of pine cone.
         }
         else
         {
             Debug.LogError("No Tree Type Located!");
         }
         
         
     
     }
     
 }