The recently published “Industry Insights” report conducted by CattleFax analysts in partnership with Angus Media revealed several interesting trends and attitudes from the feedyard and cow-calf sectors.

Focusing on feedyard factors most relevant to the CAB brand and end-product merit shows attitudes and behavior aligned with the market’s pull-through demand signals.

Factors affecting cattle purchasing decisions were, predictably, heavily weighted toward health. Vaccination status, current health condition, preconditioning and weaning status topped the list, with each of these capturing 87% to 92% of feedyard managers’ highest attention. Previous purchase history followed next with 81% strongly weighting their own feeding experience with calves from a given source. The reason for the latter factor logically includes not only health, but a handful of performance and carcass traits relative to profit potential.

Sixty-five percent of feedyards surveyed indicated a strong preference for “all or high-percentage black-hided, CAB-candidate” cattle. Cattle with verified Angus genetics came in with 35% strongly preferring this attribute. A separate question specific to only breed type revealed that 78% of feeders were strongly attracted to known black Angus, 76% toward black hide (although not breed specific) and 54% responding strongly in favor of black baldies.

When asked what role genetics play in the feedyard purchasing decisions, 34.7% of respondents note some attention to breed composition and 37.3% pay attention to hide color. Interestingly, 10.7% indicated strong attention to sires of feeder cattle, and 9.3% highly regard profit potential as denoted by genetic merit predictors. These numbers suggest there is great potential for advancement regarding use and availability of genetic information in feeder cattle transactions.

Sixty-eight percent of feeders indicated they pay a premium for cattle with the potential to qualify for the CAB brand. Of those who paid a premium, 42% expect the premium to increase in the future, 42% expect the premium to stay the same and 10% expect it to decrease.

One of the most concise questions asked feeders to score several cattle traits posing the most challenge to feedyard profitability. Health and feed conversion were the overwhelming top two, followed by dressing percentage, quality grade and carcass weight.

Possibly some of the most valuable insights useful to cow-calf producers and feeder cattle marketers are the elements feedyard managers noted they would like to change in the future for feeder-cattle procurement. Improved vaccination easily stood at the top with 83.7% of feedyards scoring this as most important (see Fig 1). More description of genetic potential for carcass merit followed in second with 47.2% ranking this highly. Rounding out the top five most preferred areas of change in the future are increased uniformity, more description of genetic potential for performance and more documented breed description.

Many more pertinent details can be easily reviewed in the Industry Insights publication here.

Editor’s note: Paul Dykstra is director of supply management and analysis for Certified Angus Beef.