Why are male cattle castrated?

Answer 1

Five main reasons why cattle (bull calves, bullocks/young bulls and bulls) are castrated are:

1. To control the genetics of your herd by not allowing inferior genetics into the cowherd, as well as preventing inbreeding or linebreeding in your herd.
2. To reduce aggressiveness; steers are easier to handle and less dangerous than bulls, and are not as rough on equipment, nor do they fight as often.
3. You are apt to get more money when selling good steer calves than bull calves.
4. The beef industry and consumers alike favour steer carcasses over bulls because the meat is less lean; bulls are typically leaner than steers even though they have a larger carcass.
5. Producers tend to get higher prices for selling steers than selling bull calves for the meat market.

The one thing that people get confused about castrating a bull is that they believe that it is supposed to promote growth and increase marbling. The latter part is correct, but the former is not. Steers are not going to grow more or have a greater rate of gain than a bull will. Testosterone in the bull's system is what promotes growth and muscular development. If you take that away from a bull by castrating him, you decrease this growth, and instead get an animal that will not just be growing muscle, but putting on fat more easily too. A bullock tends to be harder to fatten up than a steer is, resulting in leaner, less marbled beef. Some people prefer to have lean beef, but others do not. As a matter of fact, the North American market will dock if a carcass is too lean, and if a bull is being sold as a slaughter animal, all due to the issues of marbling.