Beef Industry History
Joseph Glidden's 1874 patent for this product transformed the cattle industry by making the open range a thing of the past.
What is barbed wire?
Known for its red body and distinctive white face, this English breed became a dominant force on the American open range because of its hardiness and ability to thrive on native forage.
What is Hereford?
Brisket edema, jugular distension, and exercise intolerance are classic signs of this end-stage cardiovascular condition.
What is right sided congestive heart failure?
Considered one of the most effective methods for increasing corn's ruminal and total-tract digestibility, this process combines moisture, heat, pressure, and rolling.
What is steam-flaking?
Released by cattle largely through eructation, this potent greenhouse gas is produced during microbial fermentation of feed in the rumen.
What is methane?
A cornerstone of livestock risk management, these CME-traded instruments enable producers to transfer price risk to speculators while establishing a future market value for their cattle.
What are futures contracts?
Economists use this term to describe the multi-year oscillation in cattle inventories caused by biological production lags that separate breeding decisions from market-ready beef supplies.
What is the cattle cycle?
This meat-quality defect occurs when a carcass is chilled before rigor mortis develops, causing excessive muscle contraction and resulting in unusually tough meat.
What is cold shortening?
Covering parts of 10 Texas Panhandle counties, this ranch became the world's largest fenced cattle operation during the 1880s.
What is the XIT Ranch?
Known in Europe for centuries as a triple-purpose animal producing milk, meat, and work, this Swiss breed made its modern North American debut in 1967.
What is Simmental?
Considered the principal etiologic agent of bovine liver abscesses, this gram-negative anaerobe gains access to the portal bloodstream before colonizing the liver.
What is Fusobacterium necrophorum?
Developed by Van Soest, this laboratory measure quantifies the insoluble cell wall components of forages and is one of the best predictors of intake potential in ruminants.
What is Neutral Detergent Fiber (NDF)?
Producers who suspect an infestation by Cochliomyia hominivorax are encouraged to report cases and monitor current outbreak maps through this USDA website.
What is "screwworm.gov"?
A positive or negative value reflecting localized supply-and-demand conditions, this variable links futures markets to cash market reality and is central to hedge performance.
What is basis?
In custom cattle feeding, this charge is billed daily to cover the cost of maintaining cattle in the yard, exclusive of feed expenses.
What is yardage?
The permanent actin-myosin crossbridges characteristic of rigor mortis form when muscle cells run out of this molecule required for myosin head detachment.
What is adenosine triphosphate (or ATP)?
In this year, "Select" replaced "Good" as a beef quality grade designation.
When is 1987?
Monkey was the foundational sire of this breed of cattle that was developed in South Texas and received official USDA breed recognition in 1940.
What is Santa Gertrudis?
Produced by symbiotic fungal endophytes in grasses like tall fescue, this class of compounds causes the vasoconstriction responsible for fescue toxicosis, leading to poor heat tolerance, rough hair coats, and sometimes "fescue foot."
What are ergot alkaloids (or ergovaline)?
This monovalent ionophore selectively inhibits Gram-positive ruminal bacteria, resulting in greater propionate production and improved feed conversion.
What is monensin (or Rumensin)?
Cross-species transmission of this subtype of HPAI from wild birds to poultry and dairy cattle has reshaped biosecurity planning across the livestock industry.
What is H5N1?
In 1967, this company revolutionized meat distribution by replacing shipments of hanging beef carcasses with vacuum-packed boxed beef.
What is IBP?
This feedlot accounting term describes the weight cattle lose between the point of purchase and arrival at the yard, reducing their value before they consume a single pound of feed.
What is shrink?
The breakdown of proteins during beef aging is driven primarily by this calcium-activated enzyme system.
What is calpain?
After the first U.S. case of BSE was announced in 2003, DNA testing traced the infamous "Cow That Stole Christmas" to this original location.
What is Alberta, Canada?
South African breeders developed this cattle breed to thrive under heat, parasite pressure, and harsh range conditions while maintaining excellent beef production traits.
What is Bonsmara?
Thrombotic meningoencephalitis, or TME, is the hallmark disease caused by this bacterial pathogen of feedlot cattle.
What is Histophilus somni?
By incorporating particle size and fiber concentration, this nutritional index estimates a feed's capacity to stimulate rumination and buffer ruminal pH through saliva secretion.
What is physically effective NDF (peNDF)?
According to federal antitrust regulators, this firm's benchmarking reports gave major protein processors access to competitors' pricing, cost, and production data, distorting competition across meat markets.
What is Agri Stats?
This federal market-transparency program requires qualifying packers to submit detailed data on cattle purchases, including price, volume, and procurement method, forming the backbone of many USDA market reports.
What is the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act (or LMR)?
Hedging eliminates much of a producer's exposure to outright price movements, but not this risk resulting from unpredictable changes in the relationship between local cash prices and CME futures.
What is basis risk?
This giant muscle protein, the largest known single polypeptide, functions as a molecular spring that keeps thick filaments properly aligned.
What is titin?
This iconic, 800-mile trail winding from South Texas to the railhead in Abilene, Kansas, served as the primary highway for moving over 5 million head of Longhorn cattle in the post-Civil War era.
What is the Chisholm Trail?
A naturally occurring myostatin mutation known as F94L helps explain the superior red meat yield and muscularity that characterize this French cattle breed.
What is Limousin?
Mud, manure, and skin abrasions can set the stage for foot rot, but severe "super foot rot" is often linked to the partnership between Fusobacterium necrophorum and this bacterium.
What is Porphyromonas levii?
Excess dietary sulfur can cause PEM in cattle when it is converted in the rumen to this toxic gas.
What is hydrogen sulfide (H₂S)?
This European Union policy places a carbon-based levy on certain imports, aiming to prevent "carbon leakage" by equalizing environmental costs between domestic and foreign producers.
What is the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)?
Used by federal economists to monitor consolidation within the meatpacking sector, this specific economic measurement quantifies market concentration by summing the squares of the market shares of all competing firms in the industry.
What is the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (or HHI)?
When deferred live cattle futures trade at a premium to nearby contracts, feedlots may have an incentive to hold cattle longer and market them later in response to this market condition.
What is a carry market?
As cattle age, immature collagen bonds mature into these nonreducible, trivalent cross-links whose accumulation is a primary contributor to the increased background toughness of beef from older animals.
What are pyridinoline cross-links?