01/27/2024
This change has been a long time coming 👏👏👏
Feedlot Managers Desire Change in the Feeder Cattle Market‼️‼️
➖The U.S. feeder cattle market is known to judge value superficially. Hide color is only skin deep. Yet it plays an oversized role in price determination.
➖Cattle performance, efficiency and carcass quality exhibit a low correlation to the color of an animal’s hide.
➖Good, mediocre and poor cattle come in all colors and color combinations, which makes predicting performance outcomes based on this one characteristic difficult at best.
➖An outsider might observe how the feeder cattle market operates and ask the following questions:
❓”Explain the rationale behind hide color playing such an influential role in pricing feeder cattle and calves?”
❓”If cattle producers understand that color is a poor predictor of cattle performance, then why does it continue to affect pricing decisions?
❓”Can technology be leveraged to objectively score the genetic merit of individual groups of feeder calves, rather than making inferences based on their hide color?
➖ Survey respondents believe the current hide-color emphasis
has endured past its point of greatest benefit and needs to
be replaced. They seek a more objective market. One that establishes prices with little or no influence from hide color. They want pricing decisions based on value-oriented, objectively determined attributes, such as the genetic potential for growth, efficiency and carcass.