 In this video, we will be going over evaluating composition in beef cattle, focusing on three main topics and breaking each topic down to get a better understanding of the animal as a whole. The purpose of evaluating composition is to identify which animals meet the industry specifications of meat to fat ratio that will be harvested to produce quality meat products for the consumer. This video will go over specific characteristics that should be noted when judging beef market cattle. The topics covered will be genuine base width, volume of muscle, and degree of finish. True heavy muscled cattle start at the base. The width underneath lays the framework for carrying the mass up high. Evaluate the market cattle from in front of and behind the livestock. Cattle should be wide based on both ends and carry the same width up through the chest and between the hawks. After evaluating the genuine base width, viewing the cattle from behind and over their top is most important. Initially, directly behind the cattle should be bold in their forerib and continue the bold shape to their final rib. The animals should then be wide and squarely made over their top and behind their shoulder blades. From the beef animal's back, it should progressively get wider over their loin. Finally, we reach the hip. We want a stout square hip. From the hip down, cattle should be expressively shaped and deep tying from stifle into their hawk and through their twist. Degree of finish is the amount of fat a market animal carries. It is important for beef cattle to carry a proper amount of finish to ensure a higher quality product. Fatal fat indicators are often correlated to the intramuscular fat IMF or marbling, which is associated with the quality grade of the cut of beef. The main viewpoints for fat indicators are chest, flank, cod, pones, and if handling is possible, over the final 12th and 13th ribs. When viewing from the front, cattle should have a round full shape to their chest, not triangular, which would be too lean, or ball-shaped, which would be too fat. The flank should be deeper and softer appearing, and if a cod is present, that should be full as well. Pone fat should be present around the tail head. No pone fat means that an animal is too lean. Pone fat that is surrounding the tail head is too fat. If a judge is available to handle, the ribs should feel smooth and even in the finish. A proper degree of finish ensures a quality product without being underdone, lowering the quality, or overdone, causing extra external fat to be trimmed off, which is wasteful and costly. Thank you for watching. Be sure to check out our other livestock judging videos, as well as the Alabama Cooperative Extension YouTube channel.