Guys, this is a subject very near and dear to me.....Let me preface mt comments by saying I am marketing my Beef directly to my customers. Let me also say that I realize there are very many differing views on what quality Beef is. I feel like that is a good thing that keeps us able to raise in a variety of environments and practices....
My deal....Very lean, yet not fat free. I get tenderness and flavor consistently by dry aging and feeding corn I feel....My proof is only in the feedback I get. Strongest case...At least three ladies that bought my Beef last year for thier families and all come back to say, I never eat beef, by I eat yours!
So, Fat cover is a bad thing...Yet, I also sell on the grid my excess calves or anything that ever gets doctored. So Marbling is a big deal....However, I can't allow too much as I will/have gotten complaints about fat in sirloin steaks....
At this point, I feel my selection criteria/ultimate goal is based on the order of premiums.....First is a live calf at weaning...Birthwieght, udder, all that kind of stuff....Let me say I started with Salebarn cows I put together, so sometimes udder and Prolapse tendencies don't show up till a cow is 5 years old or older....
The next premium is wieght....I really want carcass wieght to be 800 pounds or greater....I feed out my calves and am beginning to believe a good plane of nutrition without pushing them is the way to get there. This is only possible with an inexpensive backgrounding ration that still sets the marbling...I have that.
If the calves go to Tyson, then it is marbling...I have black hided calves and feel between CAB and Quality grade considerations, I could get $8-10/cwt better if they graded better...That is $60-80/head premium on those calves..
So, the trick is to do this without geting too fat for my market. Part of it is feeding them to a point and then disqualifying them from my customers if I don't need calves at that point. I would feed them up...
As you can tell by my rambling, I am not all the way done on this. but I think I am gettting it figured out. In Carcass trials, my claves have a tendency to grade Low Choice. I was going to address this with some really superior marbling cattle, but have decided to try some good marbling cattle that have mnimal fat cover...We'll see how it works...
Always a good conversation I think,
PPRM