There are a number of different reasons we find ourselves with the cows we have and the production/cost state we are in. The main cattle reasons are based on: genetics, phenotype, butterfat, glandular function and rumen development. There are grass, mineral, toxin and grazing-system reasons as well. The first article in this series dealt with how the cows' lines (phenotype) affects your bottom line. Now let's zero in on butterfat.
The average beef cow in North America produces somewhere between 150 to 200 pounds of butterfat in a year. Some have more, a lot more. I heard a speaker at a recent conference say that they were getting very good at predicting how much feedgroups of different classes of animals would eat based on the different kinds of feed stuffs placed in front of them. However, he said they could not predict individual consumption among these groups. "Some animals were eating half as much as other animals in the groups."