feeder cattle grading

[tncattle]

Was talking to friend last night and he was referring to grading feeder cattle of which I'm not as knowledgeable as I need to be. He definitely knows what he is talking about, so I searched some and I found this. It's a little old but looked pretty good in summary. Does it explain the grading of feeder cattle fairly well?

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1043w.htm

 

[dun]

That pretty well sums it up. But if you have very fleshy mediums they may be docked as being small, happened to us last year when they were graded at the backgorunders. Hauled them to the salebarn and they stole the show so a lot of it is "in the eyes of the beholder"

 

[Aero]

interesting quote

It is important to note that while Large Frame steers had more rapid gains than Small Frame steers, the Small Frame steers were the most efficient. Although it may seem odd that faster gaining cattle could be less efficient, two facts must be considered. First, large cattle require more feed for maintenance and therefore must gain faster to maintain equal feed efficiency. Second, the final backfat thicknesses for all three frame sizes in the Colorado trial were similar, indicating that all the cattle were slaughtered at about the same physiological maturity and carcass composition. Quality grade also decreased as frame size increased.

this page is pretty basic and they have most of this posted in a lot of sale barns.

there are regional differences according to who the grader is and sometimes according to what type of bulls the grader sells. ;-)

 

[Aero]

That pretty well sums it up. But if you have very fleshy mediums they may be docked as being small, happened to us last year when they were graded at the backgorunders. Hauled them to the salebarn and they stole the show so a lot of it is "in the eyes of the beholder"

yep, we have send a load of fat 6+ frame steers and been graded "Small" resulting in a 20% cut in pay. pretty annoying but when you take animals to the barn you take what you get. for this reason, the barn is the last resort - not the primary goal.

 

[dun]

That pretty well sums it up. But if you have very fleshy mediums they may be docked as being small, happened to us last year when they were graded at the backgorunders. Hauled them to the salebarn and they stole the show so a lot of it is "in the eyes of the beholder"

yep, we have send a load of fat 6+ frame steers and been graded "Small" resulting in a 20% cut in pay. pretty annoying but when you take animals to the barn you take what you get. for this reason, the barn is the last resort - not the primary goal.

I agree, the backgrounder threw them out because of the "small frame". The price at the barn was 25 cents a pound higher then what the graders had put on them because of being small.