A really interesting article in the 10/6/16 issue of Livestock Weekly newspaper (highly recommended for ranchers and those interested in rural Texas).

This was a great article which goes into great detail on the grading of cattle carcasses.

The researcher, Dr. Ty Lawrence, a prof of animal and meat science at W. Tx. A&M Univ.

I'm just going to mention a very few of the high points because I think very few will be interested in the details.

Prime is 5% of beef market.

Next, Premium choice beef is 28% of market.

Choice is not specified in article as a percent of the market.

Select beef is 21% of the market.

The the article discusses yield grade of carcasses. One being the best which means they have less back fat thickness that YG2, and so on thru YG5.

7% are YG1, 24% are yG2, 46% of cattle are yield grade 3, 11% are YG4, and 2% are YG5.

The problem Lawrence sees is if the industry wants hi quality beef (Prime and Premium Choice) that tends to occur more often with YGs one or two.

The high quality animal is antagonistic to the hi yield animal.

High yielding and high grading animals occur about .03 percent of the time, or about 1 in every 3300 animals.

So, he finds those rare raw animal carcasses and CLONES the animals off cells removed from the carcasses.

Very interesting results. First cloned sire Alpha was born in 2012. Now weighs 2600 to 2700 pounds. He has bred him to cloned cows and the results, while promising are not definitive at this time.

The actual cloning is being done in Cedar Park, TX by a company called Viagen which owns the cattle cloning patents.

Not contained in the article is the information that Viagen in now owned by a NYSE company, Intrexon (symbol XON). I am in NO WAY recommending this as an investment but IF this cloning process becomes common, which seems likely if it can be made economic, then it might reshape the beef market. That is not a near term possibility but if the stock doesn't go broke, it might be one to keep on your radar screen.

Interesting. Has anyone addressed the possibility of "flushing" premium cows like is done in the diary industry? You pump up the desired cow with estrogen so she has multiple ovulations. Then you inseminate her with the semen of the desired bull. Then the resulting embryos are transferred to hardy, range cattle to carry the embryo to term. I'm told that, since she doesn't have to carry the calf herself, it's much easier on the cow. And she can generate many calves during the year instead of one.

Embryo transfer as you describe has been done for years. But, while you're getting better cattle in general, you won't know the meat or yield grade of the carcass, which is what this experiment is shooting for....that is better for each. That's why the reseacher is taking cells from dead carcasses to clone because at that point the two desirable traits are known.

In general, embryo transfer is done in expensive registered cattle because the process is time consuming and expensive.

Interestingly, the race horse industry prohibits embryo transfer or AI.

Note: the above mentioned percentages of meat grading were from the article. They sounded high to me for prime, which is normally considered to be about 2% of the market, so I went to another source and came up with this table, which is more realistic and accurate.

Grades
Percent
USDA Prime+
0.1%
USDA Primeo
0.4%
USDA Prime-
1.3%
USDA Choice+
1.9%
USDA Choiceo
7.6%
USDA Choice-
28.5%
USDA Select
15.5%
Other USDA Grades
3.2%
Ungraded (No Roll)
41.5%
Total
100.0%

quote:

Very interesting results. First cloned sire Alpha was born in 2012. Now weighs 2600 to 2700 pounds. He has bred him to cloned cows and the results, while promising are not definitive at this time.

Gato...that's a hell of a bull, did the article mention the breed? The largest (and heaviest) bull I have personally seen was a Chianina that weighed 2250 lbs and stood over 6 feet at the shoulders. My bulls are lightweights in comparison, only about 1600 lbs. I tried to view the article you referenced in the Livestock Weekly archives but it wouldn't download for me. The paper is pretty interesting reading, so I subscribed. Thanks for making me aware.

K. Evans:

Because this is on small newsprint size pages, I am not sure how easily I can copy it, but if you'll PM me your address I'll do my best to send you a copy.

AFA Alpha, the first bull mentioned above, there is some more on him, but I'll quote this:

quote:

He was in the top 10% of cattle for feed efficiency, top 30 percent for marbling, top 6 % for tendernesss, and top 8% for palatability.

His breed came back 86% Angus, 14 percent Zebu.

"He was most likely a Brangus on an Angus," Lawrence said, "That's what you call an 'ultra black' in the industry."

Note from me, lots of stuff I don't know above, like how they grade for palatability, especially on a live animal. Also, I've been around cattle all my life and have never heard the term 'ultra black'. Oh, well....a day is wasted when you don't learn something new.

Gato: thanks for the reply and the copy offer. The lady at LW said I'd be able to view the archived articles as soon as my subscription is active. I've heard of "ultra black" and figure it's a marketing ploy. A guy about 4 miles from my home sells them (also has world champ Hereford bull) as well as sells very expensive Herefords (JKB Bulls, Bucholz Farms). I have mostly Angus, with a few Brangus and a couple of Charolais thrown in for good measure. I'm thinking very hard about selling most everything and buy some Wagyu, with the way DFW is growing I'm thinking there might be a pretty good market at some point.
My email, if you ever need it, is mk_evans@yahoo.com.
If you will be coming to DSC in Hanuary, please let me know how many days and how many people and I'll send you passes.

Karl:

Ok, I'll wait and see if you can view it online. After thinking about it, I was just going to send you the cut out article I have because I've got thousands of pages of similar items that I will likely never read again anyway. Let me know if you need it.

I really enjoy Li. Weekly, it often has some human interest stories that are fascinating.

Cattle have cratered lately, selling out now is probably not the best idea unless you can buy replacements at similarly lower prices. A wise man, my grandfather, who was in cattle all his life in E Tx, told me when I was really too young to understand, "Son, you'll never go broke, if you buy and sell in the same market."

OTOH, if you can make some connection with a Dallas butcher/meat shop, Wagyu might be a good choice.

Thanks for offer of DSC tickets, I usually don't go, I am not a crowd type person, but we'll see.