Economic evaluations of beef bulls in an integrated supply chain

Economic benefits from the use of expected progeny of a sample of beef bulls with genetic evaluations were calculated over an integrated supply chain for combinations of price discounts for intramuscular fat and LM area. Fixed backfat finish and marketing at the point of optimized gross margins were considered. An economic model was used to calculate average expected gross margins for a sample of bulls. Across-breed, age-constant genetic evaluations were used to predict carcass characteristics of progeny including weight, retail yield, intramuscular fat, and LM area, as well as input requirements including feed and housing as a function of time on feed. Proportion of retail cuts affected by price discounts was included in the calculations. Optimizing endpoints did not affect rankings to any extent relative to a fixed end point in this sample of bulls, as a result of fixed endpoints being similar to optimized endpoints for the economic situation considered. However, rank correlations were only 0.63 and 0.71 between rankings for no discount being applied and rankings with discounts for intramuscular fat and LM area, for fixed and optimized endpoints, respectively. We conclude that market prices are necessary considerations in choices of bulls to use in commercial beef production.