HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Rural Voice, 2004-09, Page 14A tender story
Waggu cattle like Llogd Kuntz's set the standard for
marbling and tenderness
Story and photos by Keith Roulston
Lloyd Kuntz's Japanese Wagyu cows and bull are much smaller framed than
European breeds, but the breed is renowned for the tenderness of its meat.
Below, a steak shows the marbling that makes Waygu meat special.
For people used to large -framed,
robust European -breed cattle,
Lloyd Kuntz's Wagyu cattle
can look downright puny. But for
beef connoisseurs, small really is
beautiful.
Kuntz was the first Ontario
breeder of the Japanese cattle the
beef from which made headlines a
couple of years ago when a fancy
New York restaurant charged $US41
for a burger made with Wagyu meat.
Of course in the post -BSE world,
no beef in Ontario is worth what
it once was.
It was early in the 1990s
when Kuntz got interested in
Wagyu cattle. It was a breed
with a difference from the regular
run of cattle and it offered the added
advantage of a reputation for ease of
calving. Since he runs a business in
Formosa and didn't want the worry
of losing an animal if he couldn't
leave work at calving time, he was
intrigued.
He did some breeding using
artificial insemination back in 1992
and in 1993 bought embryos,
guaranteed to be heifers, from an
Alberta breeder to implant in his
recipient cows.
In 1998 he brought in some high -
genetic animals, flushing embryos
from one cow to get five heifers.
Then, just
wasn't the closure of the U.S. border
that hurt Kuntz, but the Toss of the
Japanese market. He was part of an
operation which sent meat from this
breed which had originated in Japan,
back to Japanese consumers who
were willing to pay the premium
prices that made raising the slower -
growing Wagyu profitable. There the
best quality Wagyu beef can bring up
to $180 per pound with the best
carcasses selling for $20,000 on the
Tokyo wholesale market. When
Japan banned Canadian imports.
however, suddenly Canadian Wagyu
beef faced the same depressed prices
as meat from other breeds.
Despite today's problems, Kuntz
still likes his offbeat cattle. Wagyus
are everything they'd advertised to be
in terms of ease of calving, he says.
He's seldom had any problems in his
decade with the breed. The calves are
small, weighing only 60-75 pounds
and they're quickly on their feet and
nursing. It may be their small size
that makes them need to nurse
quickly, he speculates but it's also
easy for them to quickly learn to
nurse because Wagyu cows have
small, neat udders with small teats.
There's no training needed to get
them to nurse. The cows don't
produce a high yield of milk but it
has a high butterfat content.
Not only do Wagyus start out
small, they also gain weight more
slowly than the cattle on most North
American farms, putting on about
two and a half pounds a day instead
of three or three and a half. You can
feed them to get a large 1,000 -pound
carcass, Kuntz says, but with their
fine -boned structure, they'll never
seem as large as a Simmental or
Charolais.
Of course they don't eat as much
either. He's never done any feed
conversion studies but he knows
that when he gives a four -by -
five -foot round bale to his
more than 20 animals,
they'll get two days feeding
out of it.
The big advantage of
Wagyus, the thing that has made
their meat the object of outlandish
prices from some gourmets, is the
marbling of the meat. Even young
animals have ':ne marbling and you
don't have to wait for finishing in a
feedlot to put on intermuscular fat as
10 THE RURAL VOICE
a
week before the 2003 BSE discovery
in Alberta, he brought in a high
genetic bull. So much for planning.
Unlike most cattle producers, it