Accurate assessment of cattle for fatness has many uses; most obvious is the capability to match sale animals with market requirements, and secondly, too much fat is wasteful and reduces saleable meat yield, whereas too little fat can cause carcases to chill too quickly and dry out (in the chillers).

Some markets have a requirement for a certain amount of fat for its visual appeal at the point of sale. To achieve market requirements and maximise returns from the market, producers need to be skilled at assessing fatness on the live animal.

This Primefact covers:

• reference points used in manual fat assessment;
• areas of the body for visual fat assessment;
• characteristics of the six different fat scores.