Quality Takes Time
Growth curves favor greater carcass premiums with increased days on feed.
February 20, 2025
When it comes to finishing beef cattle, a pound of gain is a pound of gain is a pound of gain, right?
Not so fast, says livestock growth biologist Pete Anderson.
The director of research for Midwest PMS says it’s important to understand the variation in the weight cattle put on throughout the finishing phase, because it could change marketing decisions.
“A fed steer is not just a larger version of a feeder calf,” he explains. “Growth is a process like reproduction, healing or respiration. Growth is a process, and understanding that process is critical to managing for carcass value.”
Bovine biology 101
Most mammals follow similar growth curves. Bone growth levels off first, followed by muscle, and fat accumulates more quickly toward the end.
“Fat doesn’t grow until we get excess calories,” he notes. It takes more calories per pound of gain toward the end of the feeding period, meaning that it is less efficient and more expensive to put weight on.
“The more they weigh, the higher their maintenance requirement is, and the energy required for that increases,” Anderson says.
So, the logic might follow that the best approach is to market cattle before they hit this most inefficient stage of feeding.
Once again, not so fast, says Anderson.
By the final days on feed, up to 80%-90% of the weight gain goes to the carcass. So, if a steer is gaining 4 pounds (lb.) a day, about 3.2 lb. per day is being added to the carcass, and dressing percentage is improving, too.
“You have to ask yourself, is the daily cost more or less than the value of 3.2 pounds of carcass? If it’s more, keep them on feed. If it’s less, then sell them,” he says, admitting it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a place to start. “Very simply, profitability increases until the incremental cost of gain exceeds the sale price.”
Marketing method matters
One major deciding factor is how the cattle are sold.
“On any given day, some individual animals are becoming more valuable, and some are becoming less valuable,” Anderson says. “The value of the entire group may be increasing or decreasing, but it is always changing.”
Those who sell on a live basis will not benefit from the increase in carcass value like those selling on a grid, and not all cattle are ideally matched for that marketing method.
“If you’re selling average cattle on the grid, you should be getting better than average price because of the risk you carry,” Anderson says. “If you’re selling outstanding cattle, you should get way more. If you’re selling cattle that don’t fit, you’re going to get hit.”
Discounts and premiums look different today than they used to, so any math that relies on decades-old equations is probably dated, he notes.
“Packers are accepting bigger carcasses. They’re a lot more accommodating for heavies,” he notes, adding, “and in a population where we’re only going to have 25 million fed cattle, we have to be.”
Market signals suggest the ideal target is to get cattle as heavy as possible, without pushing too many into overweight carcass discounts. One way to curb that challenge, Anderson says, is to sort strategically at the end of the feeding period, but that adds cost and disruption so it’s not right for all situations.
Profit potential
Avoiding discounts is important, but the real route to increased profitability lies in moving the marbling needle.
“Quality grade drives your grid results,” Anderson says.
Population data indicate that jumping from 70% Choice to 90% Choice has the correlated effect of doubling the number of Primes and Certified Angus Beef® (CAB®) carcasses.
It also increases yield grade (YG) 2s, but Anderson says it’s almost impossible for lean premiums to outweigh marbling premiums.
Pete Anderson
“You get 10% more Yield Grade 2s and you can take your wife to dinner,” Anderson says. “You get 10% more Prime and you can take your wife to dinner in Cozumel. That’s the difference.”
Anderson looks to a day when adding marbling doesn’t automatically mean adding external fat, too. Although it’s not a dream immediately realized, he is confident the breed can make strides.
“Here’s why I know we can: because we’ve done it before,” he says, showing a chart of Angus birth weight and yearling weight trends. “Birth weight and yearling traits are correlated traits. Marbling and external fat are correlated traits. When you get more of one without any selection pressure on the other, you get more of the other because they come along together.”
Yet, in the early 1990s, those trends started to uncouple.
“We put a lid on birth weight and continued to get more yearling weight,” Anderson points out, as producers put downward pressure on birth weight and upward pressure on growth.
It takes an average of 246.8 lb. of corn to take an animal from a YG3 to a YG4, but moving that same animal from low-Choice to premium-Choice — the marbling requirement for CAB — takes just 13.2 lb. of corn.
“What if we got more marbling without more fat?” Anderson ventures. “We can move them a whole quality grade for a buck and a half. If we just get the marbling, it’s dang near free.”
Anderson says that will be increasingly important in the future with more pressure on environmental sustainability and efficiency.
“Sooner or later we’re going to have to answer for the calories that we’re putting in these cattle,” he says.
For now, beef is three and four times more expensive than competing proteins, and consumers still choose beef.
“If we’re going to charge that premium, it better taste good,” Anderson says.
Biologically, marbling is the last addition to the carcass. But quality grade should not be an afterthought in a profitability calculation.
“The point here is to do the math, use the tools, get the calculators. Because it’s not so simple that we can just do it in our head, drive by and say, ‘I think we should feed another week,’” Anderson says. “It’s way more complicated than that.”
Editor’s note: Anderson presented at the 2024 CAB Feeding Quality Forum in Dodge City, Kan. To review his PowerPoint® presentation or access other presentations at the forum, visit www.feedingqualityforum.com.
Topics: Management , Feeder-Calf Marketing Guide , Marketing , Feedyard
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
Issue: March 2025
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