www.NALF.org

North American
   Limousin Foundation
Suite 100
7383 S. Alton Way
Centennial, CO  80112

(303) 220-1693
fax: (303) 220-1884

NALF Notes
Spring 2007

Limousin Visions, Quality Audit Both Target ‘Grade’
By Kent Andersen, Ph.D., executive vice president, North American Limousin Foundation

It is bull-buying season in most of North America. As buyers and sellers contemplate factors that determine sale prices, feedback from the National Beef Quality Audit (NBQA) conducted in 2005 and released in mid-2006 help shed light on the beef-quality profit drivers for the years ahead.

Seedstock and cow-calf producers, stockers, backgrounders, and feedyard managers returned questionnaires to determine the “Top 10 Quality Challenges” in NBQA-2005. Here they are in rank order.

  1. Insufficient marbling and low quality grades
  2. Lack of uniformity in cattle
  3. Inadequate tenderness of beef
  4. Yield grades too high (undesirable)
  5. Low cutability
  6. Carcass weights too heavy
  7. Injection-site lesions
  8. Inadequate flavor
  9. Inadequate muscling
  10. Excess fat cover

With nine of the top 10 quality challenges under genetic control and eight of them directly related to “grade” (quality or yield grade), attention to carcass merit surely is warranted during this bull-sales season.

Interestingly, the producer responses in NBQA-2005 echo the breed-improvement directive for enhanced “grade” that breeders identified at the Limousin Visions Symposium in December 2004. Each context defined grade comprehensively as both quality and yield.

More specifically, crossbreeding (that is, utilizing breed differences using Limousin and Lim‑Flex® genetics), selection and management for profitable combinations of marbling (quality grade) and muscle (yield grade) promise to influence feeder- and finished-cattle values significantly when offspring of this coming breeding season are marketed in 2008, 2009 and beyond. On the bull-selection front, use of the Limousin Exchange listing service (accessible via www.nalf.org on the Web) and selection based on carcass expected progeny differences (EPDs) – backed by ultrasound-scan data – remove a lot of the guesswork from identifying prospects with desirable combinations of marbling and muscle for use on specific types of cows.

If the North American Limousin Foundation (NALF) can be of service in helping to plan crossbreeding systems and identifying Limousin and Lim‑Flex bulls for desirable “grade” and a lot more, do not hesitate to call Frank Padilla, Bo Sexson or me at the home office, (303) 220-1693.