The chances of improving a herd’s marbling through sires are 0.23 or just moderate. While the chances appear low, says University of Guelph’s Stephen Miller, improvements are about the same as increasing milk production in the dairy industry. "There’s enough there."

Rae, who has been raising Red Angus for over 16 years at Foresters Falls, has a grass based operation. His cows eat only hay while the calves get second cut hay and haylage. He’s fed oats but found that the calves got extremely fat.

He works at the calves’ birth weights, believing they should be less than five per cent of the dam’s weight.

Miller told the audience that through ultrasound testing he’s found out which cows get fat more quickly. "If you know that" he told the audience, "you can get them off feed faster and avoid a discount". Some of the breeds appear to put on fat more readily than others and should be marketed at a lighter weight. The number of cattle in the corn fed Ridgetown experiment was too small for definite conclusions.

He observed that as the cattle became fatter, the growth rate and feed conversion dropped off. Maintenance of larger animals is more costly, he said.

Some animals put on marbling slowly, he said. "It is very expensive to get them to grade AAA."