The Evolution of Beef
When you think of cattle, chances are you don’t think of them looking like this: This is “Ernie.” He was selected as the Grand Champion Hereford Steer at the 1948 National Western Stock Show and weighed a whopping 895 lbs.
Or really even this: The Grand Champion Angus Steer at the 1985 Houston Livestock Show.
Now, chances are you think of something that’s right in between the two. Like this guy right here: Meet “Big Boy” the Grand Champion Cross-Bred Steer at the 2016 Fort Worth Stock Show. He weighed a staggering 1,362 lbs. I know. When you look at the above pictures it’s hard to believe that at one point in time we had cattle running around not much taller than our knees AND then, not too much longer after that
…show more content…
The English had spent decades breeding their cattle to be low to the ground, compact, and able to carry more fat cover. These cattle, they believed, were able to hit their mature, harvest weight at an earlier age. As the oversized genetics of cattle in the United States mixed with the smaller framed animals from overseas, offspring bore a closer resemblance to what we know today. However, too much influence from these imported breeds started to significantly scale back the size and quality of the cattle in the United States. This is a photo shopped picture to help show the extreme differences in cattle from 1835 and 1937. The steer in the background is from shortly after British breed were first introduced to the U.S., while the steer in the foreground is the result of almost a century of selective breeding and heavy influence of British genetics. After World War II, feed yards became more popular in the U.S. and with them came specific standards for beef set forth by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA implemented the use of “yield grading” in 1965. This was a measure of how much usable beef comes from an animal after being harvested. Packers were concerned about how much of a carcass had to be thrown away because cattle were too fat and they began to share these observations with
Barrel racing is categorized under the sport of rodeo and is most likely associated with the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association and the National Barrel Horse Association. The sport of rodeo also includes bull riding, team roping, and tie down roping and can be mostly associated with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Even though the sport of rodeo is mainly dominated by men, barrel racing is the biggest outlet for women to show their skills in such a male dominated sport. Even though any breed is allowed to participate in barrel racing, the American Quarter horse is the most predominant breed in the sport mainly because it is the most versatile of all breeds and has the speed and agility to bend around the barrels. When it comes to the types or bloodlines of the horse, it is more of a personal opinion.
Lane Frost was born in La Junta, Colorado on October 12, 1963, while his dad was still competing in the rodeo circuit. Lane grew up with a desire to ride bulls. He was showing an interest in the sport as young as 5 months. His mom, Elsie Frost, said that whenever they went to rodeos Lane would always fight to stay awake to watch the bull riding. If they tried to leave before it was over, he would scream and cry and throw a huge fit (Frost 1). At the age of five Lane started riding dairy calves on the family dairy farm in Vernal, Utah. He rode calves and steers when he was younger, entering and competing in any rodeo he could. In 1978, when Lane was 15 years old, his family moved to Lane, Oklahoma. There he began to compete regularly in bull riding, and in 1981 he won the National High School Rodeo bull riding championship. Lane graduated from Atoka High school in 1982. He was offered rodeo scholarships from many different colleges, but he turned them down and decided to pursue a professional bull riding career instead...
In cattle feedlots, the conditions are very bad. Most of the time, the feeder calves are standing in mud that is two feet deep. In these moist conditions, bacteria thrive. The cattle can suffer from foot problems, like foot rot. foot rot is a disease of the hoof which the skin between the toes of the hooves rots away and decomposes. If left untreated, the foot will swell and will rot off. This is extremely painful for the animal(Hasheider 34). In these feed yards, the feed is dumped into concrete feed bunks three times a day, and that is all the cattle get to eat. They are not offered grass or any type of forage, the forage, also known as hay...
The life of Sitting Bull was extraordinary; he was a warrior and a great chief of the Sioux people (SV; SV). Sitting Bull was born in March 1831 and lived his whole life in Grand River, South Dakota. He was also the son of an esteemed warrior named Returns-Again. When he was at the age of ten; that is when he killed his first buffalo and then four years later he fought with courage in his first battle (Sitting Bull 1). As he was a little child, him, his dad, his two uncles were icons in their people’s eyes (A, B, C). During his child-hood, his name was Tatakana iyotanka. Later he started to call himself Tatakana yotanka or Jumping Bull (West 30).
The need for affordable, efficiently produced meat became apparent in the 1920’s. Foer provides background information on how Arthur Perdue and John Tyson helped to build the original factory farm by combining cheap feeds, mechanical debeaking, and automated living environ...
The American Pit Bull is considered as a genuine breed because there are various breeds of pit bull that could have been mixed with other dogs. Pit bulls were raised for baiting larger animals during the hunting seasons. With the faithfulness of t...
It’s 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Jake and I are headed down the longest stretch of road in Texas. We have just pulled out of El Paso and are on the way to Fredericksburg to participate in the Frontier Days Rodeo. We were fortunate to have put together a decent run on our last draw and win enough day-money to keep us going for a while. Jake and I are rodeo-bums, to be specific, calf ropers. I am the one who tries to throw the loop of a rope around a calf’s neck and Jake is my partner, the best roping horse a cowboy ever mounted. By the way, how many understand the art of calf roping? I thought so. Let me walk through the steps of what it takes to put together that perfect run, not that I can do it that often.
Sitting Bull was a Lakota Chief who was known for his skills as a warrior as well as his wisdom, which was highly valued by his tribe. In his life he battled against rival Indian tribes such as the Crow, which established him as a great warrior. Later he fought against the United States military, which had invaded their land and tried to take it by both force and by promised they intended to break. In his later years he was a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which made him popular with both white men and Indians. Sitting Bull was regarded as both one of the most powerful and one of the most famous Native American Chiefs to have lived.
Crazy Horse was born in the fall of 1841 to the Hunkpatila band of the Oglala tribe of the Sioux Nation. At the time of his birth, his band was camped near a stream called Rapid Creek in the Black Hills. Sioux babies were often given names based on their physical appearance. Later in life, they would receive a formal name after an act of bravery or a spiritual experience. Crazy Horse was affectionately called Curly Hair. Curly Hair looked Different from other Sioux children. He had a narrow face, light skin and soft curly light-brown hair. People said he got his light skin from his mother, a Brule who died when he was still young. The Brules were a tribe within the Sioux Nation. Crazy Horse, the boy's father, was the holy man of the Hunkpatila band, or subgroup, of the Oglala tribe. He was respected for his good advice and wisdom. It was common for a Sioux male to have two wives. When Curly Hairs mother died, Crazy Horse's second wife became his mother.
Bison were considered a main part of the American economy. Prior to the Civil War, hunters would trade and sell buffalo hide. Although some were killed for meat, buffalo hide was in higher demand. However, after the Civil War, the extensions of the railroads made it easier to transport hides. The main desiccation of the bison came with the industrial revolution (Manning, WWW). Since machinery became a mainstay in factories, part of maintenance required belting. The demand of hide of bison, therefore, increased since buffalo hide could be used as belts that would drive the machines (Manning, WWW). Within a few decades only a thousand bison were left, after the slaughter of 50 million. The depletion of bison did however spark an interest in conservation and protec...
Speed, in a word, or, in the industry’s preferred term, “efficiency.” Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and for a half a century now the industry has devoted itself to shortening a beef animal’s allotted span on earth… what gets a steer from 80 to 1,100 pounds in fourteen months is tremendous quantities of corn, protein and fat supplements, and an arsenal of new drugs. (71)
An abundance of Americans have no idea that most of the food that they consume are either processed or altered in one way or another. “Almost all beef cattle entering feedlots in the United States are given hormone implants to promote faster growth. The first product used for this purpose is DES (diethylstilbestrol) it was approved for use in beef cattle in 1954. An estimated two-thirds of the nation's beef cattle were treated with DES in 1956. (Swan, Liu, Overstreet, Brazil, and Skakkebaek)” Many people enjoy the various meats that comes from a cow, but that would probably change if the consumers knew that cattle is one of the most processed meat source in the market today because of the synthetic hormones that the cows are given. “ The three synthetic hormones are the estrogen compound zeranol, the androgen trenbolone acetate, and progestin melengestrol acetate. (Swan, Liu, Overstreet, B...
Cows are naturally very gentle and calm creatures. These smart and sweet natured animals have been known to go to great lengths to escape slaughterhouses. More than forty-one million of these sensitive animals suffer and die a painful death each year in the United States. When cows are still very young they are burned with hot irons, there testicles are torn or cut off, all without painkillers. Most beef cattle are born in one state, live in another, and are slaughtered in another. The cows who survive the gruesome transportation process are shot in the head with a bolt gun, hung upside down by there legs, and taken onto the killing floor where there throats
Most cow lovers need not worry about any of this. Their cows have become welcome household pets. They have put down their steak knives and decided to dine with them, not on them. Such docile animals have now become a part of the family, and owning but a few cows has eased the problem of naming a vast herd of cattle.
Cows go through a cycle of impregnation, birth and milking. 9.3 million cows are used to produce milk while they're impregnated. "Cows spend their lives indoors, typically on hard, abrasive concrete floors, frequently connected to a milking apparatus" (Farm Sanctuary). Cows are slaughtered for beef in the United States. These cows used for human consumption live for an average of 5 years because they are exhausted after all the intense torturing. "Young calves endure a long and stressful journey to a feedlot, where they are fattened on an unnatural diet until they reach "market weight" and are sent to slaughter" (Farm Sanctuary). Animal abuse in the food industry has allowed the companies to get more money because of the food they