PUBLISHED BY MANITOBA BEEF PRODUCERS
SEPTEMBER 2023
CE 1998 SIN
Who’s watching who? Interlake beef producer Theresa Zuk captured this image of Jess, her pasture checking partner and recent addition to the family’s operation. (Photo credit: Theresa Zuk)
Making the Use of Ultrasound Pay on Your Farm or Ranch Ultrasound is not a tool that all cattle producers use, although it is more common for purebred breeders, especially those with Angus cattle, to use it as both a selection and marketing tool, but it could have value for a lot more producers. To help demonstrate that value and the many things that an ultrasound can tell producers about an animal, Manitoba Beef Producers recently held an ultrasound demonstration outreach event at the farm of purebred Charolais producer Andre Steppler near Miami, Manitoba. Ultrasound technician, Jamie JensenWhitney performed ultrasounds on four 4H steers that were fed out and presumed ready for slaughter, and ranked them according to the results.
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It was quite eye-opening, Steppler says. “If you evaluated them all visually, without the ultrasound data you would think that they all had a comparable amount of fat and marbling in their loin, but there was one steer that the ultrasound showed had substantially less,” Steppler says. “The technician asked me what the history of this steer was, and he had gotten sick for a couple of weeks in January. She said that was the main reason that steer hadn’t marbled yet because in his lifetime there had been a stressor. To look at him you never would have guessed that.” It brought home to a lot of the producers present the importance of vaccination and herd health and making sure that healthy cattle end up at the feedlot. “With technology and traceability getter better and better, it’s probably something that we are going to have
to be looking into to make sure that a quality product is hitting the slaughter plant at the right time,” Steppler says. When to ship and when to feed Ultrasounds on some heifers also discovered some interesting results. Visually, Steppler and the other producers assessed that one 1,200-lb heifer should be fed for another 100 to 120 days before going to slaughter, but the ultrasound suggested she was ready to go right away. “The ultrasound data said she needs to go now because she would hit the top grade for marbling and if we were to feed her any longer, we would actually be discounted on that heifer as a result of the yield grade,” Steppler says. “That’s a strong financial tool.” Those are the main uses for carcass ultrasound says Jamie Jensen-Whitney, ultrasound technician. page 7
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BY: ANGELA LOVELL