Executive Summary
The Value of Cattle that can Combine
Superior Quality and Yield Grade
By Mark Anderson, NALF executive director
Keys to profitability in the cattle
industry encompass a vast number of
management choices in today’s cattle
business. Genetic selection for traits as
they relate to production pounds, feed
efficiency, maternal traits, and carcass
traits are all critical. These combined
with management choices that include
everything from feed programs,
vaccination and weaning protocols,
and mineral programs to determine
bottom line on cattle production. After
these items are addressed one must
still market correctly while utilizing risk
Table 1. Running Creek Cattle closeout with Tyson Fresh Meats
124 steers 84 heifers
Ship date Feb. 17, 2017 Feb. 10, 2017
Gross live weight 192,660 lbs. 122440
Net live weight 184,954 lbs. 117542
Average live weight 1,492 lbs. 1399
Total hot weight 121,007 lbs. 76511
Avg hot weight 976 lbs. 911
Live cost $124.34 $123.64
Actual Yield % 65.4% 65.1%
Prime % 2.4% 3.6%
Choice % 95.2% 88.1%
Select % 2.4% 8.3%
YG 1 % 33.8% 21.4%
YG 2 % 42.7% 45.4%
YG 3 % 18.5% 30.0%
YG 4 % 4.8% 2.2%
YG 5 % 0.0% 1.0%
Dress Base price $190.03 $189.96
Payment Price $212.90 $214.66
Carcass weight premium $22.87 $24.70
$ premium per head $223.21 $225.01
8 | AUGUST 2017
management practices and hope to get
a return on investment at the end of
the day. These are items that a producer
has a management choice in and do
not include items that are out of their
control such as weather risk, wild market
swings, and unforeseen mishaps that
can occur when you are looking after a
living, breathing, four-legged animal.
The building blocks for superior
genetics lie within America’s seedstock
cattle business. Now more than ever,
given advancements made in DNA-
enhanced genetic evaluations and
their unprecedented predictive power
of heritability, commercial producers
can select their seedstock purchases
with high accuracy, if they are using
all the tools that have been readily
made available to them over the past
decade. Cattle markets have and
will most likely remain volatile and
somewhat unpredictable. Given all
the inputs that must be managed in
commercial cattle production, it is
no secret that purchasers of today’s
commercial feeder cattle will want to
buy cattle that can best combine feed
performance and superior carcass
traits to help eliminate some market
risk and increase profitability.
An example of eliminating some of that
inherent risk is evident in the kill data
on cattle recently fed and harvested
by Running Creek Ranch, Elizabeth,
Colo., during February of 2017. Running
Creek has been a longtime breeder of
Limousin genetics and has fed cattle
consistently over the past 40 years.
The kill data represented on purebred
Limousin steers and heifers (Table 1.)
were raised and fed by Running Creek