By Chris McClure Contributing Editor
We depend on communication. Even when our tasks are primarily spent alone, we require communication. We communicate with our environment, our animals, our co-workers, our customers, our suppliers and, on a good day, even with our families (insert smiley face). We usually don’t do any of that very well.
Many of you know that I spent more than 13 months as a breed association executive director. The job was one of constant communication. To jump to the bottom line, what I found was that association members, with few exceptions, didn’t have a clear understanding of the cattle feeding industry.
They often knew what academia told them and what they read in trade publications, but few had experience feeding cattle. It really hit home to me when I was talking about carcass quality to one of the members, and he told me that he had data on hundreds of animals. I thought I had hit a goldmine until I learned that his data was ultrasound scoring on breeding animals. He had never fed an animal in his life and couldn’t latch onto the fact that if the animal wasn’t hanging on the rail or converted into red meat, his data was only an indicator of possibilities – not actual carcass data.
As part of my responsibilities as executive director, I was involved in the Genetic Merit Pricing Task Force – not so much as a participant but as one of many sponsors of the meetings. The task force’s goal was to develop a system wherein an animal’s genetic merit would be reflected in its value (price). From a cow-calf perspective it made a lot of sense, because being rewarded for their efforts at improvement should be the result of a properly functioning marketplace.
The communication between cattle feeding and seedstock producers leaves much to be desired.
After several meetings, I learned that the breed association had very little true carcass data on animals within their breed. They had lots of ultrasound data on breeding animals, but very little from animals hanging on the rail after going through a feeding/finishing program. There was a lot of trial data – mostly gain data and some feed efficiency data on breeding animals, but not on animals destined for the feedyard. Breed associations and their members are overwhelmed with data – but I question whether it is the correct data for making appropriate breeding decisions when the end goal of every seedstock producer should be to make the commercial beef production industry better.
We depend on packers to send the correct signals to the cow-calf industry so that we produce the kind of genetics needed to meet consumer demand for quality and quantity of products. As a result, we are making animals bigger and fatter. Are they more efficient? Do we really need that much fat? As long as we have access to lean beef from other countries to blend for hamburger and a bio-fuel industry that can utilize all that excess fat, it makes sense to the packers. Does it make sense to the cow-calf producer?
We are currently in a period of high prices that put more dollars into the cow-calf industry than they have ever seen. Many of them, however, find that it isn’t really putting as much in their pockets as it should. They have given up efficiency.
Many years ago my grandfather told me he could produce more pounds of beef per acre with moderate-framed cows than he could with large-framed cows – and do it for less cost on a per-pound produced basis. He was correct and Extension can support that statement with numbers. That’s not the signal being sent to the commercial cow-calf segment of the industry and certainly not to the seedstock segment.
Seedstock producers need to be at least five to seven years ahead of the cattle feeding industry in their genetic selection and development for breeding purposes. The communication between cattle feeding and seedstock producers leaves much to be desired. Perhaps it is time to develop better mechanisms for sharing real carcass data back to the seedstock producers. Individual animal traceability would be a good step in that direction – especially if followed with appropriate data feedback.
