Systematic Breeding Decisions Made Within A Vertically Integrated Beef Supply Chain

This paper investigates how to use a vertically integrated supply-chain model to aid in the selection of beef sires when making breeding decisions. A systematic approach was taken to model and determine the benefits and associated sire rankings arising from the simulated mating of parent stock to create progeny for use within a vertically integrated supply chain. Supply chain-wide gross margins serve as the benefit measure. Supply chain revenues are in the form of quality indexed retail product revenue. Quality indexing (i.e. discounting) factors included intramuscular fat and longissimus muscle (i.e. ribeye) area. A fixed and an optimum endpoint (i.e. harvest) selection method are compared. Varying progeny gross margins and sire rankings were produced. The various levels of gross margin were significantly different from zero, and provide a clear means by which to incorporate economic variables into selection of beef sires. No current method of selecting parental stock returns similar results.