I remember some years ago, we went to the Bob Evans Charolais dispersal.
They sold a bull by a popular AI sire at the time 20/20, the bull had been born during a cold spell and had frozen ears, they name him 20 Below, don't remember what he brought but like everything else at the sale he sold pretty well.
To clear the air, here, I am not advocating whatsoever that cattle with blemishes are totally equal to others, I think we got off track a bit from Herefords to crippled and frostbit ears.
To clarify, my statements about feeding out cattle especially those with frozen ears etc, and off color cattle. I was speaking more in terms of off color ie Hereford and xbreds. I have not made a habit of feeding out blemished cattle, did feed out a frozen eared Angus steer years ago, nothing noticeable wrong with feet or hooves or anything else with him.I also had a young yearling Charolais bull to break his shoulder. He was the pick of a calf crop from a long time breeder, and we had a couple different vets look at him. The consensus was that there was a chance he would heal up right, but unlikely. We kept him around hoping but it was soon evident he wouldn't heal right. So fed him out and gave him to a man that helped in the farm at that time. He would have been honest about it, and said it was the best he'd had.
Once had a black steer bought in a group of steers that something happened to him, probably fescue issues. He could hardly walk and when he did he was stiff and sometimes on his knees. my mother didn't like the thought of eating him so again we gave that one to a man that worked on the farm some.
I mentioned about having a few frozen ear, or short tailed calves, and have kept them for cows. They performed and held up as good as anything else, that was what I meant about those rather than feeding them out because we generally don't have those just one every once in a while. The last frozen ear calf I got was in a group of heifers I bought she sold right in the group.
We purposely feed out Hereford and or off color calves and sell the black ones.
Our Hereford beef has been great, much better than grocery store choice anything.
In terms of crippled or blemished cattle in feedyards, I agree with what
@Dave said, I would defer to those with more experience dealing with that in the feed yards.
The issue of freeze damaged hooves as an issue associated with frozen ears makes sense, and obviously crippled calves are not going to perform on par with other cattle in a feedlot, I get that.
My thinking is this, in terms of breeds and feedlot performance and quality on the rail. I would agree that Hereford cattle of several decades ago would not fit todays desired results nor would Angus in terms of yield from those times either.
The modern Angus fits that desired market and apparently other breeds do too as long as they are black.
I wonder if there is much unbiased information anecdotal or otherwise on how present day Herefords, Charolais, perform in feedlots and in the rail.
I've heard all the stories about how Hereford will put in 2 inches of back fat and still not marble ( at least that's what sone Angus breeders say).
That has not been our experience, granted it's more limited than 1000's of head, but it has been vastly different types and genetics that we have used. We did have one Hereford steer that did have quite a bit of excess fat, but that could have been over condition as we had to keep him on feed longer to get in at a processor. All of our Hereford and Hereford crosses have marbled well. Even one with 1/4 Brahman influence marbled and had tender cuts of meat. Also heard from an Angus breeder that no percentage of Brahman would ever marble.
My suspicion is that just like Angus genetics have changed over the decades that other breeds have changed as well and we may still be working with a model based on long ago experiences that are still stereotyped to this day, when it comes to the mainstream breeds.