The market’s not all marketing

By: Miranda Reiman

September 19, 2011

If you follow the Beef Daily blog, you may have come across a post last week that hit really close to home with our crew. In “The Best Ways to Market Your Cattle,” Amanda Radke even mentioned our program by name and gave us credit for driving up prices of black feeder cattle at the auction barn.

I don’t disagree that CAB probably played a huge role in that. After all, that live-animal specification is the first hurdle that cattle have to meet to be accepted into our program, but it usually surprises folks to learn that our goal isn’t to increase numbers or prices of black-hided cattle in the U.S.

Myth—CAB is just concerned with turning the nation’s cowherd black.

As the breed has increased its growth traits, people are starting to notice that they’re not just a maternal/carcass option. Many of those Angus cattle pair that with growth and efficiency.

Yet, we know the cattle business is not as simple as a color-by-number approach—you can’t just pick a breed and automatically have good cattle. Your genetic selection and how those are managed all combine to create true value. So if your cattle are red, white,striped or black,you’d better be able to tell potential buyers why they’re worth more.

If they’re Angus, and you’ve got a focused program, you should be able to include “carcass quality” and “potential CAB qualifiers” on that list.

Now if you said, “CAB is just concerned with getting more people to use those carcass-focused Angus genetics that work at every segment from ranch to feeder to packer and beyond…” THEN you’d be much closer to the truth.

May your bottom line be filled with black ink,

Miranda

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