Beef: Will yield be the next grading target for the beef industry?

‘Yield in cattle is just as important as butterfat is to the dairyman,’ says beef consultant Charlie Gracey. And an animal yielding more lean meat will cost less in feed

by DON STONEMAN

A hundred years ago, says beef consultant Charlie Gracey, butter makers complained that Holstein milk contained so little fat you could drop a dime into a milk pail and “tell whether it landed heads or tails.”

Butter makers decided they were going to measure butterfat content and pay farmers for it in their milk, and the rest of the story of the famous Canadian Holstein industry is history. Why not pay producers more for cattle which produce more usable product?

Better Farming - April 2008