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Cattlemen know marbling is important,
and they keep hearing about ways to give it a head start. Early
weaning onto a high-starch grain ration sounds promising but
could it be risky? The price of corn and potential for lighter
carcass weights keep some producers from taking that route.
But what if there was a way to rev
up the marbling motor, then coast for a few months of cost
savings before putting the pedal to the metal for a strong
finish? Preliminary data from an ongoing tri-state study
suggests a way for top-grading carcasses to be higher yielding.
Researchers from the University
of Wyoming (UW), South Dakota State University (SDSU) and the
USDA-Agriculture Research Service (ARS) in Mandan, N.D., hope to
quantify the economic benefits in the equation.
“The hypothesis is this: if we
stimulate the calf’s marbling development early in life, then,
even if we take a break from that, we can re-fill those
adipocytes later in life. We can still have carcasses that grade
just like early-weaning cattle, but they will have bigger,
heavier carcasses,” Scott Lake says. The UW livestock specialist
says that combination is vital to profitability.
“There is no question as to if
marbling is important,” Lake said in his December presentation
at the Range Beef Cow Symposium.
He cited the 2005 National Beef
Quality Audit in noting, “The No. 1 concern of both beef packers
and merchandisers is insufficient marbling.” Those end-users
transmit consumer demand signals that affect prices for some
cattle.
“If we have higher-producing
cattle, buyers for the branded products are going to know that,
and hopefully we will be able to take advantage of that premium
that is available for them,” Lake says.
Demand for Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand product has paid
producers more than $250 million in premiums for cattle that
meet the brand’s quality standards over the past decade.
But Lake says there could be
more — cattlemen need those extra premiums, plus more pounds
developed with lower input costs, to provide a better chance for
profit. The quest for quality plus quantity led him to research
the impact of calf nutritional management on quality grade.
In the joint study, Lake and his
colleagues are focusing on strategies that will increase quality
grade and carcass weights while decreasing feed costs. Their
model starts by weaning calves at 100-120 days of age.
“There are a lot of benefits to
early weaning,” Lake says. “These calves are known to grade
extremely well and there are a lot of added benefits to the
dam.” But, he warns, no system is perfect.
“While these calves are younger
when they finish, they are actually on feed longer. The problem
with that is, corn isn’t cheap,” he points out. “So we need to
strategically maximize corn intake when it matters most.”
The research model puts that
right after weaning at 100 days of age, when calves should be
pushed to gain on a high-starch grain diet. Research supports
the theory that nutrition at this point affects the calf’s
adipocytes or fat-cell development.
“We’re pushing them harder than
the average cattlemen would think you should, but we need to get
them up to the feed bunk, adapted to the high-starch diet, and
gaining more than 3 pounds a day right off the bat,” Lake says.
That will stimulate more marbling potential that will only be
realized in the finishing phase, he says.
Sure, that puts calves on a
costly corn diet earlier than usual, but better to get started
then.
“If you think about the size of a 120-day-old calf, they don’t
eat very much,” Lake says. “So in effect, we’ve reduced the
lifetime corn intake in terms of quantity and increased the calf
carcass quality.”
After 100 days of full feed,
calves go on a lower-quality, cheaper feed such as corn stalks,
winter range or whatever is locally available during the next,
less-critical developmental period.
“We slow them down and allow
that skeletal and muscular growth to catch up and develop,” Lake
says. “Then we have more of a yearling finish on those cattle
without the smaller-framed, early-weaned calf that model is used
to.”
Calves go back on a finishing
diet for the final 75 to 90 days to capitalize on the marbling
development that began after earlier.
“In theory, this is a lot
cheaper system because we are feeding them less corn over their
lifetime. But we need our economist to tell us that’s right,”
Lake says.
“We need to prove this model
works. Then we need to make sure it’s meeting the needs of
branded programs and getting the producer some premiums for
raising those cattle,” Lake says. A final report on the two-year
study should be available by next summer.
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