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Beef Cattle Size for Maximum Efficiency^{1, 2,}

Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Wooster 44691

Abstract

The question of optimum size of beef cattle has been discussed and debated for at least 150 years. We have gone all the way from the "Durham Ox" that weighed nearly 2 tons at 10 years of age to "Comprest" cattle that matured at less than one-fourth that weight. It would seem that if there were a size that is most efficient, we would have arrived at it by trial and error by this time. But, we still do not know how big beef cattle should be. Maybe there has been too much trial and error and not enough of the scientific method applied to the problem.

The main problem is that we have continued to search for the "ideal" beef animal, to fit all cattle into one mold, to have perfection in all traits, economic and aesthetic, in each and every breed. And then, we have continually changed our concept of the ideal animal.

¹ Presented at the Beef Cattle Session of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Animal Science, the University of California, Davis, August 1971.

² Approved as Journal Article No. 88-71 by the Associate Director of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Wooster, O.

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