number could be reduced to 6.5 pounds of feed to a pound of gain, we could recapture $325 million per year just because of the savings in feed costs.” According to the experts Smith consulted, the industry has actually done better than that, needing 5.75 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of gain. This improvement is due to better feeding techniques
developed by feedyard nutrition advisors; feeding more calves versus yearling and 2-year-old cattle; and by the use of alternative feed stuffs, such as dried distill- ers grains. “We’ve made a little genetic progress and a whole lot of progress from the people who advise the feedyards in feedlot nutrition,” Smith says.
Hot-iron branding In 1991, 45 percent of the cattle entering feedyards
carried a hot-iron brand. Today, the percentage is 44.8 percent, but ranchers are moving the placement of brands off the high-value areas of the hide and toward the tailhead, between the hooks and pins, “to places on the hide that make them less costly for the tanneries to use,” Smith says.
Outliers Outliers are those cattle falling outside the accept-
able parameters for beef production. These cattle are too heavy, too light, too fat, too low in carcass quality, or are cattle that were stressed into becoming a “dark cutter.” In 1991, Lambert said, outliers cost the beef industry $304 million per year in lost product or waste. In the 23 years since then, ranchers and feeders
have increased carcass weights to the point that there are almost no beef carcasses that are too light, Smith says. In fact, slaughter weights have gone up 150 to 200 pounds since 1991. “We have made good progress in lowering the per-
centage of cattle that don’t grade Select, Choice or Prime. We have made wonderful progress in removing dark cutters, because we are much more careful about how we handle the cattle in the few hours prior to the time they are harvested,” he says.
Excess fat Yield grade is an indicator of how much fat is on a
carcass compared to lean meat. On a scale from 1 to 5, Yield Grade 4 or 5 carcasses are discounted for be- ing too fat. Smith says, “The largest of the economic losses
identifi ed by Lambert was excess fat. It costs us money because we have to feed them more feed to get that fat.
90 The Cattleman September 2014
Then we have to pay people to trim off the fat. Then we have a bunch of fat we can’t actually use for anything. “We’ve taken about 5 pounds of excess fat off every
market animal we harvest,” Smith says. “That may not sound like much, but multiply it by 30 million. We have made progress.”
Management procedures The category of management procedures – including
condemnation by meat inspectors, bruises, injection site lesions and abscesses – accounted for about $143 mil- lion a year in losses, according to Lambert’s 1991 work. Smith says we’ve made no real change in the per-
centage of condemned carcasses or to the occurrence of abscesses. The industry has, however, undergone spectacular change in the reduction of bruises, down from 39 percent in 1991 to 23 percent today, and in the reduction of injection site lesions.
Retail shrink and out-of-stock products Retail shrink refers to the amount of meat a retail mar-
ket does not sell before it is outdated. Lambert reported it was about 6 percent in 1991, and it’s still about 6 percent today, according to the experts Smith consulted. Thanks to centralized meat cutting and packaging,
the days of a retail outlet being sold out of a certain cut of beef have been greatly reduced; from 16 percent in 1991 to 5 percent today, Smith says.
2014 to 2025 Dr. Bill Mies transitioned from 2014 and looked ahead
to 2025 in his portion of the presentation. He asked the question on everyone’s mind: When will the national beef cow herd expand? “We are going to see higher feeder cattle prices, record high beef prices, lower corn prices and lower debt in mature ranching operations. Those stack up to expansion,” Mies says, but several factors offset these positive signs. Ranchers are getting older and may not want to
take on the extra work required for additional cattle. Government regulations, from the Environmental Pro- tection Agency in the east to Bureau of Land Manage- ment regulations in the west, are also dampening the spirit to expand. In addition, there is a very healthy fear that drought
may return after a rancher has paid high prices to re- stock his ranch. “We’re going to see modest recovery in the short
run,” Mies says of the next few years, “but by 2025 I think we’ll have only slightly more cows than we have
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