Better Cattle Bring Opportunity
Feeding Quality Forum highlights beef’s competitive edge, pointing to areas for improvement.
Cattle keep getting better, but that doesn’t mean producers should slow down progress. That’s what attendees took home from the 2025 Feeding Quality Forum, Aug. 14 and 15 in Rochester, Minn.
It’s call to action for the entire beef industry. Better cattle, yet new and old challenges for each segment.
“I would say congratulations to those of you responsible for the genetic selections behind this [improvement],” said Paul Dykstra, Certified Angus Beef (CAB) director of supply management and analysis. “The rest of you added the management to it, and together, the choices that we’ve all made bring the consumer back to a very elite-priced protein item in the meat case.”
Cattlemen who focus on carcass traits are paid on grid performance, which is one of their biggest opportunities to capture more dollars. Quality tracks seasonal trends—primarily based on the cattle cycle and when those calves are born—which leads to periods of high premiums and months with just okay premiums, Dykstra said.
Fed cattle are averaging 70% Choice, with yield grades 2, 3 and 4. The market encourages more days on feed to add weight to these cattle. The result? Increased hot carcass weight, backfat and higher yield grades.
While yield and composition have been a priority since before the first National Beef Quality Audit in 1991, greater attention has been given to improving quality grades. Until now.
John Stika, CAB president, shared perspective as a member of the NCBA Red Meat Yield Working Group, which is evaluating whether the industry is using the right tool to determine cutability and effectively communicate relevant value difference back to producers. The current yield grade equation hasn’t been updated since it was developed in 1960, and cattle and management practices influencing composition have changed dramatically since then.
“It’s not a matter of choosing quality or yield, it’s a matter of choosing how we’re going to move both of them forward, jointly and together,” Stika said.
No ceiling on quality
Cattle prices have reached a new pricing plateau, said Dan Basse, AgResource Company president. Each week, cash cattle prices are up, and “the packer keeps bidding higher and higher.”
He estimates beef will bring in $113 billion of revenue this year, while the total corn crop may bring $57 billion.
More good news for cattlemen: he said the younger generation likes protein and vegetables.
“If you would’ve told me last year that the retail price of beef could be somewhere in the vicinity of $9.50 per pound, and we had no demand rationing, no shifting to chicken or pork, I would have told you you’re crazy,” he said.
Quality and a consistent, repeatable eating experience are behind it, said David O’Diam. With all beef expensive, the most detrimental thing for consumers would be a bad eating experience.
The increase in Prime carcasses since 2020 has resulted in a more consistent supply of Prime beef in the meat case, thus creating stronger demand for high-quality beef in grocery stores. With 12% of the fed cattle grading USDA Prime, there is enough supply to fill consistent orders.
“There’s more demand for this product than what we have,” he said. “It’s item specific and there are a lot of caveats to it, but the reality is we are demanding more Prime today than ever before and selling it specifically at retail.”
Continuing the progress
Changing cattle takes time. Genetics is part of the equation, but management is just as important.
Dallas Knobloch, 4K Cattle LLC, manages a cow-calf herd and buys feeder calves to fill his Minnesota feedyard. As he works with ranchers, he encourages them to work on the 90% of things they can control. Price will follow.
“It’s about getting everything else right first,” Knobloch said. “Whether it’s health, genetics, shipping or trucking. The timing for when we do a lot of these things makes a huge difference at the end of the day on a carcass and consistency across a pen.”
Cattle feeders like predictability. The value of a set of feeder calves varies, and many feeders have been burned before by black-hided cattle with unknown genetic composition, said Tim Schiefelbein, partner at Schiefelbein Farms and contract manager for American Foods Group.
Cattle feeders want to know what they’re getting and have a marketing plan in mind when they put a group of calves on feed.
“When you know what someone’s supplying you and you get comfortable, that’s when feeding gets fun,” Schiefelbein said. “Nobody wants a surprise.”
Marketing tools like AngusLinkSM verify what’s under the hide and let cattle buyers know exactly what they’re getting.
Genetic differences are easily masked by management and environment, said Brian McCulloh, Woodhill Angus founder.
“Data-driven selection speeds up what nature does slowly,” McCulloh said.
The tools are here, from genomically enhanced expected progeny differences (EPDs) and dollar indexes to genetic testing. Knowing heritability also helps to further a balanced-trait approach, because there may be unintended consequences of thinking narrowly.
“Establish your breeding objectives, and stay focused on them. Don’t get lost in the mania of choices,” McCulloh encouraged cow-calf attendees.
Management includes the resources at your ranch. Identifying outliers in your cow herd, alongside increasing productivity of your land, will help keep beef on the plate, said Jason Rowntree, Michigan State University professor.
“Managed grazing is having cattle at a place for a given period of time to accomplish a purpose with a given behavior,” Rowntree said. “And that purpose can be to improve animal productivity; it can be to improve landscapes.”
Ducks Unlimited (DU) works with cattlemen to provide conservation dollars to keep grasslands in top shape, not just for wildlife, but for grazing cattle.
“You don’t keep the American grasslands for habitat and wildlife unless you keep the cattle and the cowboy on the land as well,” said Ryan Taylor, North Dakota rancher and director of public policy for DU.
“This is more about building a cow sanctuary, and then the ducks and the pheasants and everything else will show up,” said Troy Hadrick, South Dakota rancher.
In recent years, Hadrick has worked with DU to find ways to increase grass utilization. The better they manage their grass, the more cows they can have on the ranch. Input costs are high, so accessing support for fencing supplies or pipe for new water sources can be the deciding factor on what projects get done.
From the ranch to the feeder, numerous factors are at play that affect cattle making it to the packer.
As cattle get bigger and better, different problems are identified. One question the industry faces: Are cattle getting too big for their hearts to handle?
Kelli Retallick-Riley, Angus Genetics Inc. president, shared the most recent research on bovine congestive heart failure (BCHF). What was thought to be a problem in steers and heifers on their way to the packer is causing more deaths at 110 days of age, according to the data.
While there may be a genetic component, there are likely also management strategies to minimize BCHF deaths.
“The challenge to all of us is that very few issues have been solved with genetics alone,” Retallick-Riley said.
That’s promising for an industry of forward-thinking producers with more tools at hand than ever before.
Find more event coverage at FeedingQualityForum.com.
The 2025 Feeding Quality Forum was sponsored by Alltech, AngusLink, NCBA Cattlemen’s Education Series sponsored by National Corn Growers Association, Diamond V, Drovers, FeedLot, Rabo AgriFinance, Select Sires, Selko, and Upper Iowa Beef.
-Certified Angus Beef
