Arnold Ziffle":3jilkhbt said:
mitchwi":2iyg2vn9 said:Arnold Ziffle":2iyg2vn9 said:
Now I'm not into showing, but why would you shave 1/2 an @$$ let alone the whole animal?? Are they afraid of dingleberry's or what?
Arnold Ziffle":2ts4ni7w said:
MikeC":14llmxuj said:There is a fairly large Belgian Blue breeder in Selma, Alabama. About 30 miles from me. He claims he has never done a C-section and has only lost a couple of calves. He breeds his first calf heifers to more conventional breeds.
I have a very close neighbor who has Romagnola that are purported to need C-sections regularly. He has never seen a calf born and hasn't lost any either.
But I have a Brangus neighbor who has to pull about 50% of his calves.
Shows that you can get hard calvers in any breed.
We need a touch of this in our herds today, but without over doing it. We are chasing the "Marbling" attributes and overlooking the main ones..............."Tenderness" and "Lean Meat Yield".
Lot's of feed is wasted by not doing so. Our biggest cost.
The classification you stated was for feeder cattle. They don't have a classification for "Inferior" on the meat grading floor because of low marbling. The low would be "Standard", I think.
MikeC":24268grv said:The NM and DM carcasses were not different in maturity (Table 1). However, the NM carcasses had significantly higher marbling scores and quality grades than did DM carcasses. Quality grades for the NM cattle averaged low choice, while the DM carcasses averaged high standard. This again emphasizes the overall reduction in fat content of carcasses from DM cattle.
Frankie":39xdxik3 said:MikeC":39xdxik3 said:The NM and DM carcasses were not different in maturity (Table 1). However, the NM carcasses had significantly higher marbling scores and quality grades than did DM carcasses. Quality grades for the NM cattle averaged low choice, while the DM carcasses averaged high standard. This again emphasizes the overall reduction in fat content of carcasses from DM cattle.
Standard! Standard is discounted to Choice as much as $28 according to this USDA site. YG 1 premiums aren't going to make up that difference.
http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/lm_ct155.txt
MikeC":1n6hd1kz said:I will concede that Standards are not where we want to be but High Standard ain't that far from Select. When the Choice/Select spread is low like it is now it pays.
The added tenderness of the DM's can play a big part in the way this goes. I don't rule anything out and am not ignorantly set in my ways to believe that we are raising perfect cattle yet.
There is always room for improvement. When we become complacent, we are screwing up. Marbling is not our salvation because of the low correlation between marbling and tenderness.
Consistently Tender will gain us more marketshare than Marbling ever will. Write it down.
Arnold Ziffle":22tsh7ek said:Mike, I could have the wrong person in mind, but I seem to recall that you had expressed some interest in AI'ing some of your Chars with Wagyu semen. If it was you and you did in fact AI, do you have any calves on the ground yet?