When we fed cattle there was a serious price drop on carcasses of 851 and over. It was a big drop, so we tried to make sure we didn't have cattle on feed that would produce these bigger carcasses.
I just checked the stats on fed cattle slaughtered in June here in Canada. The average carcass weight in Alberta, was 837 lb which means to me that there are lots of carcasses over 851 if the average was 837.The last time I checked the US stats were very similar to this. The discount for big carcasses has moved way up to almost 1000 lbs. I commented on this a few months ago, when I related a conversation I had with one of the biggest livestock buyers in this area. He told me that we, as seedstock producers, were not following market trends. He said that he was able to purchase entire semi load lots of uniform cattle 15 years ago, and do it all day long, and that he is not able to do this any longer. He said if he buys one or two pot loads of uniform cattle a day, he is doing good. He said that the uniformity of the cattle he sees had decreased drastically, and that there are too many smaller framed cattle that will not stay on feed long enough to get to a desired weight. Of course, this was just one man's opinion, and I have never thought of cattle buyers as being the smartest people on the planet, but this conversation did make me do some thinking.
So, one question that comes to mind is the obvious one.... if the feeders and packers are wanting cattle that will produce carcasses that are a little bigger than a few years ago, why is it that the seed stock industry appears to be heading in the other direction? Are seed stock producers just trying to change the shape of the package rather than the weight of the package?
Last spring, I had a well known cattleman from the US go through the bulls in our bull test. I was totally shocked at the bulls he picked out of the pen. He picked out the smallest framed bulls with the poorest performance. He kept going back to one bull and walked around him several times. Finally he said, "that may be one of the best bulls I have seen this year". I said to him, that he was made right, however, he did not have enough performance and we were even considering not putting him in the sale. This bull was pretty, but he weighed 900 lbs at 365 days.... which in my world, does not pay many bills. This cattleman then said " you cannot get them too small framed for me". I replied that just because the pendulum started to move, regarding frame size,does not mean that we should run to the far end of it as fast as we can. I understand that we continually will see changes in type in the industry, but I hope we are smart enough to pay at least a little attention to basic industry demands.