The cattle feeding industry in United States has shift in recent years from its formerly heavy concentration in the Cornbelt to the central and Southern Plains states.
Most of the high capacity feedlots are found in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado. There is a trend toward custom feeding cattle in large feedlots, with cow calf operators retaining ownership of the cattle.
Other changes occurring in the beef industry include:
- Efforts to lower unit production cost
- Development of closer coordination of breeding, growing, feeding, marketing and processing operations, generally through, contracts rather than through the vertical integration that is found in the poultry industry.
- Greater quality control in production in an effort to reduce the amount of fat in beef and produce carcasses with the characteristics in demand in the marketplace.
- A growing interest in the concept of Integrated Resource Management to increase net income by making the most efficient use of all available resources.
- Beef use roughages that otherwise would be wasted for feed
- Labor requirements may be low
- Capital investment can be small
- Death losses are usually low
- Beef are adapted for use un small operations as well as large ones
- There is high demand for most
- Cattle feeding is a high risk business
- Cattle are not efficient converters of concentrated feeds into meat.
- It takes longer to develop a cattle herd and increase numbers than it does to develop hogs or sheep.
- The capital investment in modern, efficient operations can be high
