Originally posted by spindoctor01
hey, cowpoker, hope you're having a good day. i've heard a lot of great things about your meat (really, countless things) and to be honest i've become your number one fan. i just wanted to bask in your presence for a little bit and thought maybe you would have some meat related stories to regale me with. xoxo
Nothing new and exciting, still shooting for a beef carcass that is between 13-14 months old to achieve the desired tenderness which means you need explosive growth and feed conversion genetics along with genetics that are able to add marbling at a relatively young age. Still shooting for a 950+ lb hanging carcass or a finished live weight of about 1450 lbs at that 13-14 month age range.
The flaw within the current USDA grading system in terms of quality are that you can feed almost any animal for long enough to achieve USDA grade Prime, in fact a lot of your Prime Rib are from Holsteins that have been fed for a long time, sure you get the required intramuscular fat to make Prime Grade but it doesn't make the eating experience any better. Night and day difference between a black angus that is young and a Holstein that is 10-12 months older.
A good tip for determining if your Prime Rib is good quality is that it should be rounder, good indication that it came from an actual beef animal. Over fed dairy steers will have a rib cut that is shaped more like a deflated football, longer and narrower compared to the basketball appearance from a quality beef animal. Also look for the snowflake effect of fat within the red meat instead of the larger veins of dense fat. You can do that at your grocery store as well, skip both the cuts that have what look like veins of white fat that are larger than a pencil or cuts that appear to be solid red meat with no fat in between. I'll try and find a pic of what I am talking about.
