Insights Into the Beef Industry and Genetics From Lee Leachman

Today we're excited to bring you a conversation we had with Lee Leachman, CEO of Leachman Cattle and noted beef industry and genetics expert. We talk about the current status of the beef industry, the impact that genomics has had on today's beef herd, and a look at where we're headed as an industry. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Cathy D. Today is Thursday, May 14th, 2026. Today we got a special conversation for you. I'm really excited today to turn a conversation I had with Lee Leechman, CEO of Leechman Cattle. I got to know Lee a few years ago. Back in the day, I used to do some work with Siletis. Actually helped launch HD50K way back in the day. Did a lot of strategy and messaging and PR around inherit, and uh just been involved with the genomics business for a long, long time. Got to know Lee, interviewed him a few times about his perspective on genomics and indexes and so forth. And was just thrilled a few weeks ago when I reached out to Lee and asked if he'd be part of the podcast, and he uh graciously said yes. So uh conversation, interview that uh you're about to listen to, we cover quite a broad range of topics. Uh we get Lee's perspective on the industry. We do talk a lot about genetics and how that's impacted uh cattle the way they are today. Uh we look a little bit into the future, touch a little bit on beef and dare beef on dairy, uh, and then uh you know talk a little bit about you know what makes some of the top beef operations unique. So uh hope you enjoy it, thrilled to bring it to you. Let's get to it. Well, Lee, welcome to ChatBDC Podcast. It's really a thrill for me to have you on.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Great to be here today. Should be fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah. Um just kind of to get started. Um, I know you've been around the industry a long time. That's just means to say that you're experienced, you're not old. Um what's your perspective on where we're at in today's beef industry, you know, from a supply-demand standpoint? I wish we could. I mean, I'm I we we could probably do a two-hour podcast just on this question, but um have you ever seen anything like this before?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

No, I don't think anybody has. I I don't know. I mean, obviously, you know, we weren't we weren't alive when uh when uh you know the the early cattle drives and all those kind of things. And maybe maybe they had analogous boom times back then, but uh I mean at least certainly in this modern era, uh the concept that we would be selling beef for the the level of premiums over pork and poultry that we are is uncharted now. I I would have told you a long time ago that that this really good marble beef is way better than pork and poultry. And now and now we're making lots of it. And I I think it's you know, I mean, it it's like if you were, you know, if you were, I suppose if you were like Toyota and you were making the original cars they brought into the US, which probably, you know, they weren't very good, right? They kind of had a now you have now you have their their Lexus, right? Which is a great product, right? And they sell for an incredible premium over what those old cars do, because they're better. I think that's where we're at with beef. I mean, beef is better. Um and uh we haven't, you know, we have a short-term supply constraint. When I say short-term, you know, whether it's two years, three years, five years. Uh, but I think the long-term outlook is super positive because as a US producer of high quality beef, we're in a little bit of a unique situation globally. It's going to be harder for other places to make that beef, and we're gonna enjoy some really good prices. But you know, like anything, um, in agriculture, when prices are high, we all tend to overproduce. And so you you I would I wouldn't use this current euphoria as a uh indicator that we can sit back and rest on our laurels, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Exactly. So you talk, yeah, you talk about the quality of the beef. I know you've been a leader innovator in the genetics business for a long, long time. Are we starting to see some of the impact of those genomic selections that we've had, you know, over the last few years? Or what what how what kind of an impact has you know breeding for better cattle had?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Well, I want to start by saying that there's a big impact that fed cattle over two dollars and cost the game down around a dollar is having. Okay, we are feeding these cattle extremely long periods of time to extremely heavy weights, and that is driving up large. Okay, there's that we're we're getting the full potential genetically out of the current cattle, okay. And we've built much more potential into them. It's both, okay. And if you ask me to parse it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even know where to start, Mike, but I would say that it's maybe half and half. I mean, I would say at least half of it is us long feeding. If uh if this drought drove corn to six and a half dollars, we'd figure out how much of it's long feeding because we'd correct right, yeah. But it has changed, and the cattle are better uh at marbling if given the chance, and we are feeding them along, and so it's all that, and and certainly genomics is allowing us to make improvements, leaps and bounds, leaps and bounds, you know, with greater accuracy.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, as you look back on kind of the history of genomics since you've been kind of at that forefront. Is there is there anything as you look back that kind of surprises you of what the impact has been?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Well, I think the original surprise was because I can remember when when people would get up in front of us and tell us that the genomics are gonna change the industry in the next two years. I think that was like 25 years ago. Um and it and it didn't, right? It didn't. So like some of us sat on the sidelines and said, well, maybe it's never gonna work, okay? Um, and and and as a company, we kind of dove into it with Zoetis about seven or eight years ago now. Uh, and and it really it takes two or three years before you see the fruits of your labor. Um it's allowing cattle breeders, beef cattle breeders to make incredible progress now. And you see that within every breed. Um, you know, the larger breeds obviously have more advantage at bigger populations, and and so the identification of those outliers is both more accurate and uh and they're farther from the mean, which allows them to move faster. Um but gosh, we can make cattle do a lot of different things right now. And our our only our only limitation right now, Mike, is having enough data on all the traits that matter so that we can balance that that selection. I have to remember that these animals are are a biological system, right? And they they they respond to selection pressure in ways we intend and in ways we don't intend. Okay. And we've seen that in in spades outside of beef cattle. We've saw it with with dairy cattle. You make them milk more. Wow, fertility goes to heck, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Right, right, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

We saw it with with with uh you know chickens. You you you make them grow that fast, you know, their legs have problems, and you run into something that that was called woody breast. Whoops. Yeah, right. Right. Uh so we have these this long history of selecting the biological system known as an animal for certain traits and having unintended consequences. And our limiting factor with genomics is genomics is really good at warning us if we have those characteristics quantified with data and evaluated with genomics. But if you don't, uh you can go off the road just as faster, faster than ever, right? Because you're driving super turbocharged, massive horsepower sports car now. And don't don't look down at your text because you'll be in a ditch, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Well, you know, get given that, are there any mistakes that we made as an industry when we look at genomics? Are there, you know, are there are there uh rabbit holes we went down that we shouldn't have?

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Oh, still are. Still are, yeah. Um, you know, the first one was what everybody did. We did we, you know, we're just starting to come out with good fertility predictions, right? I mean, fertility is the most important trait. It's like the most important trait. It's the most important trait for cow calf for profit. It's the most important trait for maximizing the efficiency of beef production and any type of sustainability measure you would do. Okay. Because it drives everything, okay. And uh it's been the trait we've spent the least amount of time worrying about, and it's where genomics can help us the most because genomics is super helpful at helping us make improvement on low heritability traits. And you you see that uh, I think a great example that's mastitis in dairy cow, right? Very lowly heritable trait. It's about as heritable as as fertility and beef cows. But guess what? We've the dairy guys have significantly moved the mean on that in a very short period of time, and it's because of genomics. And so, so that is a great tool. Um, it's not it, it doesn't work unless you collect the underlying data. So, somebody, somebody somewhere is doing the heavy work, the heavy lifting. Uh, as a company, we like doing that. We think we get paid for doing that if we're smart, and so we're we're investing in what we think are highly financially relevant traits that are hard to measure. One of those big things. And those traits are, and those traits are what like feed efficiency would be an example, right? Right, and certainly cow fertility is one of those. Um, and and I think the list right now is about five or six long um that we think that we don't have good predictions for currently that we need to. So that's a time process, you know, collect the data, uh, you know, make sure it's right, run the and develop the models, put it in indexes, and here we come, right? And so that's exciting. Um and uh, you know, I'm kind of a dreamer and and I and I like creating, and so that's that's the fun part of the business for me, is trying to say where where we know where the puck is now, where's the puck going, right? The old Redskin. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Um, well, given the kind of evolving consumer landscape and the demand that we have for high quality beef, are there traits that we need to be selecting for that we're not, or are there traits that if we look back, you know, 15 years from now, we look back, we think, gosh, we should have been doing this or that.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

The big one right now, we've we've put so much emphasis on growth and end product merit that we've built a cowherd that's increasingly straight-bred Angus, and also increasingly um higher in requirements, feed requirements, size, how much you know, how much they need to make the engine go. And because of that, fertility is is not very good right now, Mike. I mean, it's not as not as off the rails as it got in dairy cattle, but it's it for beef cattle, I mean, we're we're quite a ways off the rails. Everybody said it for a long time. They said, you know, we're selecting for cattle that are more terminal. And we are, and and just as that has come home to show us the benefits on things like marbling. I mean, I'm not saying marbling was the cause of the fertility. It's not, I don't think. But collected for terminal traits and it worked. Some of the terminal traits, particularly growth rate and high milk levels and big cow size, are negatively affecting fertility and it's significant. And so we've got to figure that out as an industry, how we're gonna cope with that. Um, I think some of the things, you know, we we're not doing a lot of cross-breeding now. And in the 70s, we did a lot of cross-breeding. We had we had British cows, we bred them to European bulls, we crossed British breeds, we had a lot of hybrid vigor in the cowherd. It's a useful thing to have. I mean, I don't know of any other agricultural field where they try to produce their product without hybrid vigor. I don't know that that exists, right? I mean it's it's kind of a crazy idea. Um, so we need to figure out how to incorporate hybrid vigor. It's complicated. Um, and and I think people are working on those systems. And I think selecting for fertility, particularly using genomic tests to give you um accurate predictions on replacement, potential replacement heifers, is probably the next big thing. Okay, as as I see it today, it's a huge cheat code, okay? It's a huge way to jump ahead, right? It's like a shortcut. Um, right. If you're not if you're not up on cheat codes, right? Shoots a shortcut to get from here to there faster. Why? Because we're basically picking heifers right now visually. And I said to my customers, I say, if you think that's a good idea, why don't you come to my bull sale and not look at the catalog and buy bulls? They're like, why would we do that? And I'm like, well, that's what you do with your heifers every day.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Well, that gets back to my question again, too, is you know, if given the economic status of the cow calf market, is there a reason not to use genomics? I mean, it used to be all we can't spend that money on our cows or heifers, but boy, there isn't, shouldn't be a reason now not to use it. And we think especially the value of those animals that are coming back to the herd.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

The return on investment today of doing a genomic test on two heifers to decide which one you're gonna keep. So you're gonna pay for two tests to keep one. Um, we think that return on investment is somewhere between five and seven X, depending on whether you sell at weaning or whether you sell um at harvest. So it's a huge impact.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Leah, I think we had this conversation about eight years ago, if I remember right.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

So yeah, so some things don't change. So it's here today and it works. I mean, it works really well now. Um, and I I would tell you, we know we have we do we do work with a number of seed stock producers and a lot of commercial guys. If you went and interviewed a hundred of them doing these tests and asked them if they could run their business without them, they would say they wouldn't want to. Okay. It's become that important of a tool to the people that are using it. And the things they're able to accomplish. I have a I mean I have a great anecdotal story. I have a friend in uh in Arkansas and a small herd, but he said, I said, What's your what are you doing? He said, Yeah, I said you test all these heifers. He said, I'm gonna have a herd that produces feeder calves that grade 100% prime. Like, I'm like, really? It's like again, he keeps me posted, like he'll text me and be like, I had I had two that weren't this year. And I'm like, you know, so it works, okay. I mean, like exactly the thing works, and and what we don't understand, we think, oh, I'm buying good bulls, all my heifers are the same. Okay. Well, any of us that grew up in big families know that that full set mating, so you're mating the same side of the same dam, you get a lot of variation, okay. In a cowherd, you're mating the same group of bulls to the same group of females, you get all kinds of variation. The DNA test lets you pick those animals that are going to be best for you out of the ones you created. And it's and the difference between the ones you keep and the average one is substantial. And so it's a it's a it's a it's a and and you know, think about how many cow calf operations tried to keep records for the last 40, 50 years. And really that strategy didn't work very well because you invested all this time and money in collecting the record and you really didn't know how to use it. Right. And and you got a cow in a herd, and she's pregnant, and you're like, well, she's not as good as average, but I don't know if she's bad enough for me to cull her and replace her with a heifer that I went and selected visually who's average anyway. You see what I'm saying? It's like uh, you know, it's not a winning strategy, but but what is a winning strategy is to is to have these genomic tests and not spend money collecting data. You get all the you get more data out of a $30 genomic test than you could collect if you measured everything in your herd. Right. You know, yeah. Um it's it's super powerful.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah. I wanted to shift gears a little bit and get your perspective from an industry perspective and talk a little bit about beef on dairy. You know, that's been a been that's been around for a few years now. We can kind of get a perspective on you know what impact it's had. Um are we doing better today with B Fond Dairy than we were you know a few years ago? And with that in mind, we're what do we need to get better at?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Um we are doing a lot better. Um I think we're doing a lot better at using bulls that are complementary to the dairy cow. Yeah, for a while we just used beef bowls, and then after that we just used Angus beef bowls. And now we're starting to think about which Angus beef bowls would be best. Um and I think that uh if you collect data, you see big differences. Um where we where we've done the most improvement is we're we're improving dramatically how they marble. That's been the easiest one. Um, I think the old adage was that Holstein and cattle marbled really well. They marbled really well because they were on feed for 365 days. Okay. They didn't necessarily or more, they didn't necessarily marble because their EPD for marbling was or their marbling potential was great. Okay. They're they're not nearly as high as our as our Angus are. Right. Okay. Um, but so when we cross them, we create a lot more opportunity there. Um, where are we not doing a good job yet as a as an industry? Uh we we really haven't moved the needle on feed commercial on those cattle, and they're not good. Um, and we really haven't moved the needle at all on red beat yield, and they're not good. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

And I think are we getting better at liver abscesses or is that still a big problem?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

No, it's a big problem. I I would say, and I and I didn't pop into my deal because I don't know today how I can fix that, Mike.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah. Okay. That's that's a that's a management situation at the young calf level.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

We've we've got a we've got a trait. We're we're collecting data. It's it's heritable like mastitis. Okay. Okay. It is that heritable. Uh, I think we can move it, but there's so much more money moving something else right now. Feed efficiency, red meat yield, that I don't think we're gonna I don't think we're gonna spend a lot of energy on liver abscess until we grab some of that low-hanging fruit that's out there. So you asked earlier what are we not measuring in as an industry? You know, if we look at the cattle we killed today versus the cattle we killed 20 years ago, 40 years ago, or 60 years ago, they're not much more muscular today than they were then, as a percentage of carcass weight. And so we've improved we've improved quality a lot, but we haven't changed red meat yield. And if we look at the other, you know, always efficiency of consumable product yield is is a big measure, whether you're in crops or chickens or pigs or fish or anything, right? Um, and we haven't done a very good job with that in beef in the U.S. So I think that is about to change. I think there's a lot of research being done to try to recalibrate this yield grade formula. I think we're gonna have some type of vision technology that looks at a carcass and tells you how much how much edible meat's in there. And when they have that technology, I would look for the uh processors to realize that just as they incentivized us on marbling and it worked, they now need to incentivize us on red meat yield, and it would that will also work.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Um as we kind of wrap up here, I wanted to get it, kind of get some philosophy from you. So um as you look up into the future of the industry, what excites you the most uh given you know all of the advancements that you've helped create? What what excites you the most as you look into the future?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

I think I'm most excited by the fact that this genomic technology and the data we're collecting is gonna allow us to make cattle that are better at everything than the cattle we used to have. I I kind of started out in the industry, you know, 35 years ago and and said you can have this or you can have that, right? You can have them grow fast or you can have low birth weight, right? Well, obviously that's one we know today. You can have low birth weight and stuff grow fast. Now, I I think you can have them do just about anything you can imagine you want them to do, okay? Um and and you can get there a lot faster than I thought with genomics. And so, as someone late in a career, that excites me because uh otherwise I'd be depressed because the turn's so slow, you know. You're like, how much change you're gonna make? Well, I think we're gonna make a lot of change. Uh, we're making, you know, our annual change rate of change now is faster than it's ever been, and we're doing it on a lot of traits, so that's exciting. Um, I think the other thing that's exciting, um I say this in a very nice way, I think. Um, or way I hope it's perceived as nice by landowners. As landowners in the US, we haven't been particularly intensive in our management of our forage research resource. Okay. And the tools that we have going forward to do that well are pretty dang exciting.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

And I and I think that's I think we're gonna have uptake of that, and I and I think it's gonna make us much better at rearing cattle. Okay. I think and because we're gonna do we're we're gonna get more productivity out of the land base we have, the land base is shrinking, so that's important, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:06

There's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

You know, it's it's the cost of land more than anything that has today's beef being a shortage. If we can manage that land more efficiently, if we can if we can generate more beef per acre because of the way we graze that, that's like found money for a rancher.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Yeah, there's uh I've done some work with some ranchers that have really got into kind of regenerative practices and building up soils and forages and so forth. And that's really exciting stuff when you can turn, you know, a piece of ground that has been not productive into something that is that is really productive and you can you know raise cow calf pears on.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Exactly. And and I think we're just starting to scratch the surface on that. Um, you know, we're excited about some of these werewolves, you know, that they're gonna think and the uh the the last thing that I would say is that you know, I'm not a big one on ranchers collecting a lot of data. I'm big on data we can collect if we don't have to do anything to collect it. Right. And and there's starting to be tools for that.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

There is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

And we we just put some tags in our in our elite donor pool that tells us whether they're in heat every day.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Wow, that's pretty cool. I don't have to do anything, it like shows up in the computer. It's that that's great.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Yeah, so less dairy guys have been doing that for a while now, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

I know, I know, I know, and it's good. I you know, I grew up, I mean, when I was uh when I was seven years old, I I my dad left me with one of the cowboys at the ranch, and we rode out and heat detected on cows for the next 60 days, and I I know how much work that is, and and and and uh AI is pretty limited in beef cattle because because nobody wants to go do that now. I can see with the technology that's on the horizon, we might start seeing more of that.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Right, yeah. So well, um, probably should wrap up here, Lee. I think we could talk for another few hours, but I certainly do appreciate your time and your insights and and uh thanks for joining us today. You bet great time to be in the beef business. Thanks, Mike. Well, that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Lee. As always, thanks for tuning in to Chat BBC. If you enjoyed this, leave a comment, subscribe, share, and join your friends. I'll be back tomorrow for news from the financial market. I'm Mike Opperman and goodbye.