UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
iPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1464 
Washington, D. C. 
issued January 1927 
Slightly revised August 1940 
MARKET CLASSES AND GRADES OF CATTLE 
By Don J. Slater, marketing specialist, Agricultural Marketing Service 
CONTENTS 
Page 
Introduction 1 
Systems of standard market classes 
and grades of livestock 2 
Basis for standard market classes 
and grades of cattle 3 
Classifying and grading cattle 3 
Market uses of cattle 5 
Slaughter cattle 5 
Definition of slaughter cattle 5 
Slaughter cattle schedule 6 
Definition of terms 7 
Classes of slaughter cattle 12 
Relative importance of market 
classes of slaughter cattle 13 
Age-selection groups of slaughter 
cattle 16 
Weight-selection groups of slaugh- 
ter cattle 17 
Grades of slaughter cattle 17 
Slaughter cattle chart 18 
Grades of slaughter steers 25 
Grades of slaughter heifers 35 
Grades of slaughter cows 44 
Page 
Slaughter cattle — Continued. 
Grades of slaughter bulls 51 
Grades of slaughter stags 57 
Feeder and stocker cattle 60 
Definitions of feeders and stock- 
ers 60 
Feeder and stocker cattle sched- 
ule 61 
Basis for classifying and grad- 
ing 61 
Grades of feeder and stocker 
cattle 62 
Feeder and stocker cattle grading 
chart 63 
Grades of feeder and stocker 
steers 66 
Grades of feeder and stocker 
heifers 75 
Grades of feeder and stocker cows_ 80 
Grades of feeder and stocker 
bulls 84 
Grades of feeder and stocker 
stags 88 
INTRODUCTION 
Each marketing day throughout every year many thousands of 
cattle are shipped to the large central livestock markets and offered 
for sale. These cattle are of every kind, displaying a wide range 
and almost innumerable combinations of the various characteristics 
such as sex condition, age, weight, size, shape, breeding, and flesh 
condition. They sell at a wide range in price. These differences in 
price reflect the degrees of variation in these characteristics and 
consequently variations in the degrees of merit for uses for which 
the animals are purchased at the market. 
The need for standard market classes and grades of livestock and 
the benefits that everyone engaged in producing, distributing, and 
marketing livestock could derive from their general adoption and 
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