If you think muscling of stocker/feeder cattle doesn't affect price, consider the most recent USDA-calculated Weighted Average Summary for 16 Texas Auctions. Medium and Large Frame 500-600lb #1 Muscle steers averaged $94.21/cwt. For the same frame and weight, #2 Muscle averaged $86.02 and #3 Muscle (and there are some of these around) averaged $78.04. For 550lb cattle that's a discount of around $45/hd for #2 and $89/hd for #3. For the same gross dollars as #1, the #2 and #3 must weigh more, but heavier cattle bring less per pound. So, #2 would have to weigh almost 120lb more (because they would bring about $8/cwt less than #2 550 pounders), and #3 would have to weigh about 210lb more (because they would bring about $10/cwt less than #3 550 pounders). Even just slightly lighter-muscled cattle (#1- #2) would have to weigh almost 50lb more. Another way to get the same total dollars as #1 would be having more calves to sell. But it would take almost 10 more #2 and almost 21 more #3. That would require proportionately higher reproduction or lower death loss. Say the #1 were from a herd with 82% weaned calf crop (the Texas average). For 550lb cattle, to get the same total dollars as #1, weaned calf crop percent would have to be 90% for #2 and 99% for #3. So, muscling is a real price factor, but according to the USDA Grades they don't have to be bubble-butts to be #1, just at least moderately thick. Stay away from excessive muscle, but have enough.
SCROTAL CIRCUMFERENCE AND HEIFER PREGNANCY
Scrotal circumference (SC)has been shown to be a reliable predictor of semen volume and age at puberty of bulls and age at puberty of heifer relatives. It also has been suggested that SC may be related to pregnancy percentage (P%) of related females. Colorado researchers compared SC of yearling bulls with P% of heifer relatives. SC was highly heritable (.71), while P% was low (.14), as has been shown in other work. Unfortunately, SC was essentially unrelated to P% (correlation .02). It looks like you can't rely on SC to predict pregnancy percentage in heifer relatives.
WHAT CATTLE DO FEEDERS WANT?
At the recent Blackland Income Growth Conference, a major feeder said his company wanted cattle to be 50-100% British, 0-50% Continental, and 0-3/16 Brahman genetics. But, in cattle of unknown origin, how is his company determining genetic type? Buyers visually estimate genetics, the old "eyeball" method. Research and observation show that eyeballing genetics is not very accurate. More often than not, cattle have more Brahman than buyers eyeball. Pay attention to the visual appearance buyers want and don't want, but their breed formulas are just rough guides.
GLOBAL WARMING - MAYBE, MAYBE NOT
Recent research indicates that movement of Antarctic glacial ice streams has slowed and the ice is becoming thicker, not thinner as earlier thought. Other research indicates that Antarctic desert valleys, long thought to be an indicator of global climate change, are now noticeably cooler than in the mid-1980's. Is the globe warming, cooling, or not much of either?
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