The skinny on backfat
April 25, 2011
Mythbuster Monday on trait relationships
Certain things just go together: peanut butter and jelly; socks and shoes; margaritas and those cute little cocktail umbrellas. But this morning we’re going to talk about two things that are married in many producers’ minds, but need to go through the big D.
Backfat and marbling.
Myth: Cattle have to have a lot of backfat in order to marble.
Fact: In general, that might seem true, but it doesn’t have to be. Easy-doing cattle, British breeds, etc., all have a tendency to lay on more fat—both in the form of marbling and backfat—than other types. And that’s the way it always was, until EPDs, feeding technologies and new research pointed to ways to get one without the other.
When you are designing your ideal herd of Angus cattle, we know they do not HAVE to be connected. You can make great progress in adding marbling without adding backfat because they are not correlated. On the other hand, when you are feeding the average pens of cattle that exist today, research shows there is a connection, so that thickness of external fat is a good indicator of compositional endpoint.
A few years back, Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) research identified .5 to .6 inches of backfat as the ideal target for maximizing grade without ruining cutability. Technology, like ultrasound sorting, or just a staff member that’s a good old-fashioned sorting wizard can make it easier to get uniform groups in the feedyard.
Once you have stacked a few generations for higher marbling without adding backfat, you and your partners in cattle feeding will see that it’s easier to finish top quality-grade cattle at or above your target carcass weights, without getting into the discount trouble of too many Yield Grade 4s.
I’m not a geneticist, so if you want some specific recommendations you might talk to the smart folks in St. Joeseph. Or if you’ve got a question you want me to hunt down the answer to, leave it below. Afterall, I do like a little detective work now and again.
May your bottom line be filled with black ink,
~Miranda
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