beefandsleep
Member
- Location
- Staffordshire
On Woodheads producer website you can see all sorts of stats on your cattle weights, grades, condemned offals etc.
One stat I find interesting is the lifetime carcass weight gain stat. It tells you how many kilos of carcass your beasts have put on per day of life. It also gives the last 3 month average of cattle killed by Woodheads.
It really shows what massive potential there is to increase the efficiency of beef production in the U.K. The latest figures I have shown above put average carcass gain at .39 for heifers!!! For average sorts that puts dlwg at 0.7kg a day.
Steers not miles better at .45 or 0.8 kg dlwg.
Now some of these cattle must have had seriously hard homes before ending up on a finishing farm.
Is this a stat we should be focusing on as a measure of Industry efficiency? Or is it of little importance?
Could slaughterers reducing the ages of in spec cattle actually be doing us a favour by forcing us to focus on lifetime gain and do away with wasteful store periods?