Ultrasound technology used in judging market calves at fair

The quality of meat that will be produced by the market calves entered in the 4-H and FFA beef show at the Cloud County Fair can now be judged on the hoof instead of on the plate through the use of ultrasound technology.
Brad Robert, a veterinarian with Tallgrass Veterinary Hospital, with the help of Heath Ramsey, veterinary assistant, was using ultrasound technology for carcass trait measurement of the market calves being entered in the fair Friday morning.
The real-time ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves to display images of muscle and fat under a living animal's hide. The process is harmless to the animal.
A sound-emitting probe, or transducer, is placed on the animal's back. The sound waves penetrate the tissues, reflecting off the boundaries between the hide, fat and muscle layers. As the sound waves are reflected back toward the probe, a cross-sectional image is created on the ultrasound machine monitor, which allows measurement of various carcass traits.
The measurements collected can be used to estimate carcass retail yield and meat quality.
Common traits estimated include ribeye area, rib fat, rump fat and percent of intramuscular fat.
“You are looking at it on the hoof instead of on the plate,” Robert said.
The images collected by Robert and Ramsey are sent off to The Cup Lab, LLC in Ames, Iowa, which uses software to analyze them.
Five images are taken of each animal, and the scores are averaged at the lab.
The Cup Lab then provides the results to the judges at the fair, and awards are presented for the best beef carcass.
Prior to the use of the ultrasound technology, the judging for best beef carcass could not be done until after the animals were processed at Duis Meats Processing.
“So they would get it on the rail. But then you couldn't present it at the fair,” Robert said, “So this is a way to do it live instead of hanging,” Robert said.
Robert said that in the ultrasound image, the black is the muscle and the white is the fat.
The amount of white within the muscle determines what the marbling score is. The higher the quality of marbling, the more valuable the animal is.
“If you go to the store you want to pick a big one (steak) that has a lot of white in it. Here we are trying to pick those out. That way the kids can be judged on that,” Robert said, “Different ways of feeding the animals creates different marbling scores. It is another kind of measurement of how well they have prepared their animal for the fair.”
The quality of the carcass is determined by how the animal was cared for and genetics.