24 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN November 2024 Cattle Efficiency TRESSA LAWRENCE | CONTRIBUTING WRITER What That Means Economically and Biologically The Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) held its annual convention June 10-13 in Knoxville, Tenn., with presenters from across the United States and Canada coming together to present on current hot topics in the beef industry. Throughout the convention, the theme of cow efficiency was prevalent in many discussions. Cattle Efficiency With so many conversations surrounding “cattle efficiency,” there can be different interpretations of the term. Many of those interpretations can be filed into the categories of biological efficiency or economic efficiency, which are intrinsically intertwined. David Lalman, Ph.D., Extension beef cattle specialist and professor at Oklahoma State University, gave a presentation titled “Full Picture of Cow Efficiency.” “There are a lot of ways to define or look at cow efficiency, and it depends largely on the market endpoint,” Lalman said. “Are we talking about a production system as a whole, a ranch or herd level efficiency, or for the individual to try and improve upon? Are we talking about biological or economic efficiency? We try to apply economics as much as we can in terms of determining ways to improve. All of these definitions will have some agreement that what we need is a low level of inputs.” Production Cattle efficiency is often associated with increasing production, but Lalman emphasized that it is more than just boosting outputs. “Improving production or output is important, but in most operations, controlling costs trumps increasing output,” Lalman said. Lalman reported that in many commercial cow-calf operations, cow cost impacted the variation in profitability by 60 to 65 percent, as opposed to increasing either the number of calves sold or This graph from David Lalman’s presentation shows trends in carcass weights for steers, heifers, bulls and cows since 1960. This graph from David Lalman’s presentation shows the increase in beef production in pounds per cow since 1950. PRODUCTION
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