The Growing

ANGUSJournal n 151 I feedyard performance pays the bills and governs bidding for calves, then “The Business Breed” is really taking care of business. Evidence suggests the Angus breed has been developed to a point where crossbreeding may not provide a feedlot or carcass advantage. Two recent feedlot analyses from Iowa and Kansas, on more than 86,000 head, show Angus cattle beat crossbreds on feed. That doesn’t surprise scientists at the Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), whose data say the Angus breed has caught Continentals in many growth traits. “Angus has a lot of tools and research, and breeders have used them to select a lot harder,” says Larry Kuehn, MARC research geneticist. “Take yearling weight, for example. They’re almost as high as Simmental and Charolais now, and they’ve passed Limousin and Gelbvieh. There’s been a tremendous amount of pressure there.” Sally Northcutt, genetic research director with the American Angus Association, says postweaning performance in the breed has shot upward since the 1980s. “We’ve seen a significant change in what Angus cattle will do in the last 15 to 30 years,” she says. “Historically, the Angus breed was not considered competitive in terms of postweaning gain, but the data show you can capitalize on aggressive feedlot gain from Angus genetics. In the past, producers thought they had to get that from other breeds.”