The commercial Angus rancher from Collyer, Kansas, came back for daily homework in 1999 after a year at college. For 25 years now, he’s studied all the ways to grow his family’s W6 Cattle cow-calf herd with Angus at the base. Guided by data, Walt worked to improve the herd from zero Primes to averaging 60 percent. Learning what drives premiums prompted improvement.
Troy Anderson, managing a Nebraska ranch, focuses on breeding thriving maternal cows that will grade premium Choice and Prime, while respecting livestock, people and land. Anderson Cattle receives the 2023 CAB Commitment to Excellence Award. Their journey includes improving genetics, feeding home-raised and purchased calves and using data for better breeding decisions, all with a bottom-line approach.
Thirty-five thousand cattle may fill these pens, but it’s the Gabel family who set the tone for each day. Steve and Audrey persistently create a people-first culture, echoed by their son Case and daughter Christie, who work alongside them in the yard office. The Gabel’s drive to effectively hit the high-quality beef target earned Magnum Feedyard the CAB 2023 Feedyard Commitment to Excellence award.
Prime cutout values and grid premiums have been rich in the third and fourth quarters of the past two years. Yet the spillover into the first quarter this year shows that the market is reacting to the recently smaller availability, retreating back to the 2019 supply pace.
How cattle are fed matters, but much of their potential for grid success is already set before cattle even set hoof in the yard. Cow-calf producers are the designers of the raw material.
As quality continues to trend up and more cattle qualify for the brand, the CAB/Choice spread may gain ground on the old Choice/Select metric as an industry standard. Along the way, the brand will keep working with all partners from pasture to plate, adding value to every cut and premiums for Angus cattlemen.
Producers can target cow herd genetics toward the factors driving value in the supply chain. Backfat and marbling have differing value implications at the packing plant and can be selected in different directions in the herd. Understanding grid marketing opens more opportunity for big wins.
Many cattlemen have an idea of how grid marketing works, but might still have some questions as they’re digging through carcass data. Paul Dykstra will present a free webinar, “Understanding grid marketing and carcass data,” on January 21, 2021 at 1:30 p.m. CST.
Brian Bertelsen, U.S. Premium Beef (USPB) vice president, spoke at the Beef Improvement Federation’s recent online symposium, covering everything from hot carcass weight to quality grade targets. This article shares the data that shows what’s really possible.
The many challenges the beef market is facing today are serious short term problems but are not indicative of long term trends. Price and demand signals will also realign as the pandemic subsides. The interrupted flow of cattle and boxed beef has implications now impacting the pricing structure on a carcass value basis.
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