The Systems Concept of Beef Production

have emphasized increased production, more milk, faster gains, and greater mature size. Therefore, they have adopted management practices and bred cattle with this purpose in mind. As a result, weights and gains have increased in performance-oriented herds. In many cases, however, increases in profitability have not paralleled increases in production. The systems concept of beef production incorporates an awareness that there is more to consider in a beef cattle enterprise than simply the level of production. What is most important is the overall efficiency of the enterprise—in other words, net return. While level of production and market price are important factors affecting profitability, costs of production are equally important. The “systems” part of the concept implies that a beef operation is really a system of many components, all of which play a part in determining net return. These components can be categorized as (1) natural environment (forage resources and weather); (2) costs, prices, and market requirements; (3) cattle type; (4) crossbreeding system (rotational crossbreeding or use of large terminal sires to produce market calves only, etc.); and (5) management practices (supplementation, retained ownership, through processing, practices reflecting supply, and quality labor, etc.). A beef production system is highly complex because of the large number of factors affecting it and the high degree of interaction of these factors. For example, the management practice of creep feeding might be advisable for one type of cattle in one environment, given certain ranges of costs for creep feed and prices for feeder cattle. Change the cattle, the environment, or the economics, however, and creep feeding may no longer pay. To effectively use the systems concept, a producer must view the beef cattle operation in its entirety and understand how its component parts interact with one another to ultimately affect profitability. Good beef producers have been doing this for years. The cattle that best fit the systems concept are those that are most profitable. They are those that complement all the other components of the beef operation. They must be compatible with the environment, market requirements, the crossbreeding system, and the particular management practices in use. Because there are so many possible combinations of these factors, there can be no universally “best” animal. Determining exactly what is the “best” animal for a specific situation is difficult because there are so many traits of importance in beef cattle and so many trade-offs among these traits. For example, increased size and milk production contribute to heavier weaning weights, but create stresses that can depress fertility. Cattle that are more productive, in the sense that they produce larger, leaner, and faster growing calves, are more of a reproductive risk. For this reason, a major element of the systems concept, as it applies to cattle type, is to avoid extremes in production traits. The very largest, leanest, and heaviest milking cattle are not, in most cases, the most profitable. For these traits, intermediate levels of performance are usually optimal. The systems concept of beef production presents