random user

Speaking of boomers, yes, let's talk about carcass sizes. Despite my love for hysterics, everyone's favorite metric of "cattle herd numbers going down" is correct. That does not mean less meat on the shelves. Because cows are getting bigger. Much much bigger. Too big even. By a lot. Genetically, cows are only supposed to be around 1,000-1,100 lbs mature weight. That is the model the entire industry was built around from farm to grocery store shelves. Here's how too big of cows are horrible for each phase. The framework (essentially) is: Cow calf -> stocker -> feeder -> packer. Cow calf guys have to keep and feed cows year round. Cows eat around 3% of the their body weight every day in all sorts of feed and roughage. A 1600lb cow eats 48lb of feed (changes if she's milking etc but we'll skip all that). A 1000lb cow eats 30lb. Over the course of a year that's 6500lb of forage difference. Calf growth is (generally) all in the same ballpark because biology. Assuming the rancher sells at weaning, both cows will sell around a 550lb calf. Same revenue, 38% difference in efficiency. And that snowballs into how many cows you can keep a year and simply reducing your cow size let's you have more cows, selling more calves, being more profitable. Stocker guy buys the weaned calves and grows them out for a few months and basically grows the bones and frame size and a little meat. Less calves available because ranchers have less cows makes their costs go up. Feeders buy next and they put the finish on them. Which is where things really bog down. It takes way longer for a cow to reach mature body weight when they're so big. Costs way more to feed, they gain less efficiently, feeder has to hang on to them way longer before they become profitable and really blocks his cashflow. Packer buys to process. They've had to raise the rail 3 times now because cows were getting just so large. Less cows from the feeder means less retail cuts (restaurant steaks etc) which is where the profit is. And per usual, less animals, bigger frames, less amounts of steaks equals worse cashflow. On top of this, since we're in uncharted territory genetically, the weight the cows put on is not good, they're in horrendous health, horrible high sugar diets, all kinds of growth problems etc really impacting meat quality nutritionally as well as just animal health. This is all a result of boomerism "bigger is better". It is not. Our entire beef infrastructure is completely bogged down with these stupid massive cows. The fix is incredibly simple and it revolves around cashflow. We must make an industry wide effort to reduce mature weights back down to around 1,000lb and it fixes so many issues. Thank you for coming to my cow Ted talk. Source: me. I'm currently doing it and my 1,000lb cows make way more money than boomerdads 1700lb monsters every year. Here's a chart.