Feedlot at Guthrie in In the early twentieth century Oklahoma feedlots were predominantly small lots on farms. Each lot held from one hundred to four hundred cattle. The cattle were fed grains and forages grown on the farm and were sold locally, or they were taken to a central market for sale and slaughter.
A few large feedlots were constructed around local cotton oil mills to utilize the mills' by-products. The Eufaula Oil Company opened in in the Indian Territory and reportedly fed up to one thousand head of cattle annually. The Chickasha Cottonseed Oil Company at Chickasha furnished feed to cattlemen who fed their livestock in pens adjacent to the mill.
Similar pens were located around other mills and were active until the s. Large custom feedlots developed in Oklahoma during the late s. Usually the owners of these establishments were local farmers and entrepreneurs who worked together to develop markets for their grains and forages and to provide economic development for their community.
Some lots feed as many as seventy thousand head, but a typical feedlot supports from thirty thousand to fifty thousand cattle at one time.
Farmer-feeders generally produce most if not all of the corn and forage fed to their cattle and typically own most of the cattle.
These feedlots may have capacity for 1, to 10, cattle at one time. Custom feedlots are generally larger, with numbers up to , at one time. Cattle are typically fed for customers who own the cattle. The customer pays for the feed, health supplies, and "yardage"—the cost of facilities, equipment, labor, and so on. The custom feedlot makes a profit by maintaining customer cattle near capacity. The feedlot must operate very efficiently to maintain the customers.
Feedlots vary from simple facilities to sophisticated, computer-operated feedlots with veterinary and nutritionist consultants. Feed is mixed and fed to the cattle two or three times daily with feed trucks. Larger feedlots have feed mills that operate with computers, in some cases unattended by employees. The feed trucks have electronic scales and in many cases onboard computers that are used to record the amount of feed allocated to each pen. These records are then downloaded to the primary computer for accurate recording and billing to customers.
Health of the cattle is monitored daily by a "cowboy crew. Sick animals are removed from the pen and taken to a "hospital" area for treatment and recovery. Innovative feedlots now have mobile hospitals that move to the cattle pens, where the cattle are treated. Most common health problems are respiratory diseases; however, few cattle become sick. As World War II was coming to an end, producers knew that price controls were ending as well. So, cattle feeders intentionally kept their product off of the market, anticipating a price increase.
They got it. At the retail level, the cost of virtually all cuts of beef doubled between and , and then tripled again by Yet, beef consumption still went up and peaked during the early s. Consumers were willing to pay a premium price for a soft, red, juicy steak. Even in , 88 percent of American families had at least some fresh beef in their diets.
Consumers still wanted the best cuts and they turned to the government to ensure the quality. Beef grading standards had been set up in , and in the 50s the standards for Prime and Choice grades were adjusted.
In , USDA graders stamped 50 percent of interstate beef, 40 percent of lamb, and 20 percent of veal. In response to consumer demand, supermarket chains kept increasing their proportion of graded beef. By , 78 percent of all interstate red meat was graded. In the percentage rose to 89 percent and reached 96 percent by Despite pressure from some producers, the grading system still favored grain-fed carcasses with more fat, or "marbling," than leaner cuts from cattle fed on grass.
One of the first entrepreneurs to take advantage of these factors was a Safeway supermarket executive in California, Dwight Cochran. He noticed that his firm couldn't get enough Prime cuts, so he resigned from Safeway and organized a publicly held company, the Kern County Land Co. It was one of the first large feedlots.
The firm turned to the latest research into cattle nutrition to fatten cattle "according to rigid specifications," as the company's publicity put it. Others followed into the feedlot business. Between and , the number of cattle on farms nearly doubled, from 60, to over , head. But the number of farms producing cattle dropped by around three-quarters, from 4.
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