If you’re a cattle or beef producer, your bottom-line depends on the quality of beef your cattle can produce. You want to raise good looking cattle. Be it Angus, American Wagyu or Hereford, you want your cattle to produce good beef. But how do you do it? All you have to do is pick a healthy, good looking pair and let them mate. Now this is an oversimplified statement of a process that may actually take generations. So how do you actually improve the quality of your beef and how can a cattle identification and traceability system help?
Let’s say that you have multiple bulls in your cattle or beef operation that you have bred for the correct traits. Traits known for producing high grade offspring and good quality beef. When the time comes for grading their offspring, you realize you can’t figure out which of your bulls were actually responsible for the high quality beef. Even if you can figure it out, you may not be accurate. Because cattle are kept and fed in your feedlot or ranch for hundreds of days and pedigree information is almost always lost. Picking a pair is easy; but picking the right pair that can give you the desired results is not. But humans are not cows and what they can’t do themselves, they use technology to do it.
Here is good news for cattle and beef producers. You can actually track bulls and the offspring they produce throughout their lifespan. You can then see which ones are producing high grade offspring and which ones are not. And with all the data available at your disposal you can breed a new generation of bulls that are even better than the ones before. This will give you even higher grade offspring and the most desirable beef. If you’re responsible for genetics supply chain at a cattle or beef producing company, you can use technology to constantly improve the quality of your cattle.
With a Cattle identification and traceability system implemented, you can keep complete track of each cow that enters your feeding operations. Such a system allows you to store unlimited records such as DNA, health records, pedigree records, feeding records, identification tags, etc. The system lets you keep adding information even after the animals are processed. Their precise grade is added to the data that you can analyze to understand which bull was actually responsible for the high quality beef that you wanted.
Also Read: Livestock Identification and Traceability Systems for the Beef Industry
However, the desired result doesn’t just depend on genetics. Nutrition, handling and management also play an important role. And your desired results aren’t always the same. You may want some cattle to follow a specific program while the rest to follow a different program. A cattle identification and traceability system lets you use data to find out which combination of bull, cows, feed and nutrition will give you the traits you want. These include efficiency, yield, and tenderness among others. By using technology and making smarter decisions, you can produce huge amounts of high quality beef.
Cattle and beef producers are constantly searching for ways to produce higher quality beef. Technology such as beef record keeping software and traceability systems can help you better manage your cattle, leading to increased productivity and profitability. What means an improved bottom-line for you, means a premium quality steak for consumers.
