 In this video, we will be looking over volume and flushing ability on the beef animal. The term volume refers to the amount of mass and size that animal displays. Flushing ability is the potential of an animal to gain weight and muscle. The bigger and wider the animal, the more weight gain or muscle potential that animal has. The characteristics that you should be focusing on when talking about volume and flushing ability are the width of body or rib shape, the depth of the body, and the length of the body. The width of the body refers to the barrel of a beef animal. As a judge, you want to see a large width throughout the belly of an animal. This shows that the animal will have room for weight gain to hold more muscle for its frame size. When we talk about the rib shape or spring of a rib, this means good curvature to the ribs, not flat or straight down. When looking at the depth of body on a beef animal, you should look at the distance from the loin to the bottom of the belly. The farther the distance, the more capacity that animal has to hold a calf or can carry more weight, meaning that animal will be able to put on more muscle compared to the beef animal with a shallow body. Also, a good body depth will be uniform throughout the barrel, staying straight and level on the belly floor. When looking at length of body on a beef animal, look down the top line of the back and from the point of the chest to the end of the round. You want to see decent length and a strong top line. If a beef animal has a longer body, it will have the ability to produce lean and long muscle for good quality meat. Thank you for watching. Be sure to check out our other livestock judging videos, as well as the Alabama Cooperative Extension YouTube channel.