Three Numbers That Sink a Load

Plenty of cattlemen can tell you their steers graded Choice or better and still do not know why half of them missed the brand. Quite often it is not marbling. It is three plain numbers on the carcass sheet: ribeye area, backfat and hot weight. Here is how to read them and what to do when they are off.

The limits and the way they are worded change over time, so get the current spec from the brand. This site has no connection to the brand or the Angus Association. For services near you, there is agriculture.directory.

The limits as reported

A Drovers write-up listed the brand's size limits as a ribeye of 10 to 16 square inches, a hot carcass weight limit, and fat thickness of 1 inch or less (Drovers). The Angus Association's journal later describes a 10- to 17-square-inch ribeye and a 1,100-pound hot weight limit (Angus Journal). Different sources, different dates, slightly different numbers. That is why I tell people to read the current paper and not rely on what somebody told them at the sale barn.

Ribeye

The ribeye is measured at the rib cut, in square inches. A Drovers review of a year of carcasses that missed said 22.9 percent missed because the ribeye was outside the 10 to 16 square inch range, and only 0.5 percent of them were too small. So nearly all of those were too big (Drovers review).

That tells you something. The industry has spent years selecting for muscle and growth. The result is cattle that outgrow the box. A big ribeye makes a big steak, and the brand wants steaks that look alike in a case. Big-framed cattle by terminal-type sires are the ones to watch.

Backfat

Fat over the ribeye, measured in inches. The spec is 1 inch or less. The same review reported that over-an-inch backfat made up 7.5 percent of the misses in each of two years. Fat is the easiest one to control. Cattle that are fed too long, or fed hotter than they need to be, get fat. Cattle that are naturally early-fat types hit the limit sooner. You can sort them and ship them sooner.

Hot weight

The review also said the limit went up by 50 pounds to 1,100 in October 2022, and that carcasses over the old 1,050 figure fell from 13.8 percent of cattle in 2020 to 4.6 percent in 2023. Those are numbers on cattle above the old limit. Another trade piece reported that the share excluded only for weight above 1,050 pounds rose from 3.8 percent to 7.7 percent when carcass weight rose nearly 25 pounds from 2019 to 2020 (Drovers). Weights have kept climbing since. A bigger steer is more money at the scale, but only up to the line.

How the three work together

Pounds, fat and ribeye move together. Let a steer eat another 30 days and he adds weight, fat and a bit of ribeye all at once. He might pick up marbling, too, which is the reason to feed him. At some point he runs out of room and the limits take the premium away. The skill is finding the day he is as good as he is going to get.

Our article on feeding for finish without overdoing it goes through the same idea.

A walk through a bad load

Say you ship thirty steers and half miss the brand. You look at the sheet. Ten missed on marbling. Three had ribeyes over the limit. Two were over an inch of fat. Maybe one was just heavy. Most guys see that half missed and figure the cattle were no good. But look: only ten of those fifteen are a genetics-and-feed marbling problem. The other five are size problems, and a size problem can usually be fixed by shipping sooner, sorting better or changing which bull sired which calves.

That is a made-up example, so do not take the numbers as a benchmark. The point is the method. Break each miss down by reason and the fix becomes obvious. If you only look at the percent that qualified, you do not know where to start.

When bigger is the plan

Some operations do not care about the brand. They sell on a yield-based grid or to a feeder who pays for pounds. If that is you, the size limits are not your limits, and a heavier carcass is just more money. The mistake is selecting for size and then trying to sell into a program that punishes it. Know your buyer, and breed for the market you actually have.

What to do

1. Pull your last three closeouts and count misses by reason: marbling, ribeye, fat, weight, other.
2. If misses are mostly size, look at your sire set and your days on feed.
3. If misses are mostly marbling, see our article on modest marbling.
4. Sort pens by size and finish date so the fat ones go first.
5. Ask your feeder what your cattle looked like on the bunk and whether they were sorted.

Farm.fm's page on feeding programs for Angus herds covers rations at a general level.

Straight talk

Get the carcass sheet, and read it by the reason for each miss. A herd with a marbling problem needs different bulls. A herd with a size problem needs better timing and maybe a different set of bulls too. Both can be fixed, but only if you know which one you have. For grade definitions, go to USDA's beef page.