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Genetics and breeds directly
affect marbling and tenderness of the meat. Photo by Gary Karmer. |
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Genetics
There are a ton of different breeds of cattle out there. If you
read the breeds marketing literature, they all seem to “calve
well, gain fast, and do great under range conditions.” Of
course, if this were true, we’d only need one breed of cow.
In reality, we all live in different climates, and we are all looking
for certain strengths in our cattle – even more so for you
as a niche marketer.
For example, meat marbling is definitely one of those personal
preference issues. Some particularly health-conscious customers
don’t want any marbling in their beef. Others claim their
beef isn’t tender without a little fat. You’ll need
to discern what most of your customers like and plan your breeds
accordingly.
One more thing you also will hear is, “There are more differences
within a breed than between breeds.” There is an element of
truth to this. By the same token, you will never find a Zebu that
marbles as well as a Wygu. The moral here again is only you will
know what’s best for you. Based on what we learned about genetics
and our experiences, we’ve made some basic conclusions.
Cattle that marble well:
• Angus
• Jersey
• Hereford
• Red Angus
• Highlanders
• Murry Grey
• Tarantaise
I’ve read that Highlands cattle marble very easily; they
have so much hair, they don’t need any back fat and put that
energy in marbling.
Leaner cattle with less marbling:
• Zebu
• Brahma
• Brangus
• Gelbvieh
• Braunvieh
I have heard that there is a strain of Brahma that is very tender.
Personally, I have had very bad luck with them, as tenderness goes.
Only about 4 percent have been tender enough.
The longer we are in this business, the more respect we have for
genetics. Good genetics has a lot to do with the tenderness of your
beef. Angus cattle can make just as many tough steaks as a Brahma.
It just depends on the genetics behind them. Good genetics also
has a lot to do with profitability. There is a 20-percent difference
between our best cattle and our worst in the weight of our high-end
cuts.
Another area we are working with is maturity. Maturity is based
on frame size, but knowing when an animal has matured (and, more
importantly, marbled) is as much of an art as a science. It’s
just a skill you have to develop. However, there are some basics.
No matter how much you feed your animals or how good the forage
is, they will not start to marble until they mature. Currently,
the conventional market is looking for animals maturing at 1,200
to 1,300 pounds. This seems ludicrous. The only person to profit
on such heavy weights is the feeder (who gets to sell more feed),
and the packer (who gets a break by spreading his hard costs over
a heavier animal).
For a grass-fed product, we are looking at something that will
mature in two years or less. After about 30 months of age, you will
start running into tenderness problems related solely to age (this
isn’t a hard and fast rule, with good genetics we’ve
been able to slaughter open three-year-olds with no tenderness problems).
With that in mind, we’ve been looking to raise an animal that
will mature at 800 to 1,000 pounds, a figure sort of pulled out
of a hat. Maybe 600 to 800 pounds is the magic figure. We chose
800 to 1,000 pounds because it seemed do-able without getting into
an extreme breeding program.
As our genetics and quality of forage improves, we are experimenting
with trying to take this weight up to 1,000 to 1,100 pounds. The
jury is still out on whether this is economical. If you buy calves
instead of producing your own, you may want to choose the shorter
frame animals that will mature at your lighter harvest weight.
Ultimately, we believe these new breeding programs will be a spin-off
industry of grass-fed beef. Beef that do well in a feedlot don’t
necessarily do well on grass. Special breeding lines will have to
be created. Grass-fed cattle in Minnesota will be very different
genetically from Florida, or Arizona, or anywhere else. We all have
different situations and needs. We will all need different genetics,
and someone, somewhere will supply them.
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