Thinning herd, heavier cattle reshape Missouri’s beef supply chain

Cattle farms and feedlots in Missouri today are populated by cows that are a far cry from those that roamed pastures 80 or 90 years ago.

Cattle back then were referred to as “buckle cows” – named that way because they only went about as high as a rancher’s belt buckle. But in the 1950s, when cattle herd numbers were low, cattlemen began putting more emphasis on cows’ “frame size,” or their height.

In the past few decades, with improvements in genetic technology, farmers have been able to measure extremely specific qualities in their cattle. This has led to a shift from increasing the frame size of cattle to increasing the “performance,” or weight, of cattle. That means cattle aren’t getting taller, but heavier.

The U.S. cattle inventory hit its lowest level in 73 years in 2024, largely as a result of recent droughts. The solution isn’t as simple as just breeding more cows, because cattle producers have to balance the amount of cattle they hold back to reproduce, and the amount they sell off to feedyards to generate revenue.

Don Close, a senior animal protein analyst at agriculture publication Terrain Ag, said the industry has been shifting breeding practices to mitigate the recent cattle shortage.

“Being the lowest we’ve been since 1951, the industry has elected to make cattle bigger, to compensate in pounds what we’re losing in head count,” Close said.

Close estimated that the average live weight of U.S. cattle increases by about eight pounds a year. The carcass weight, or how much cattle weigh once the hide, bone and other inedible parts are removed, increases by about five pounds a year.

But there has been a particularly noticeable spike in the past decade or so, caused by incentives from meatpacking plants.