A:   There are forage finished beef that do not receive grain. It usually take a longer period of time to finish these cattle (harvested at a specific weight or a specific backfat) as average daily gain is lower for forage finished diets. Forage finised diets will have yellow colored fat due to the carotene in foages. Most cattle in the United States are grain finished as there is an increase in efficiency of gain. The fat in grain finished cattle is white due to the grain. It takes between 70 and 90 days to convert yellow fat to white fat in a high grain diet in a dry-lot setting. Usually forage finished cattle are older at harvest and as cattle increase in age, tenderness will decrease.

So if you want to add grain to the diet of cattle that are grazing vegatative forage to finish the cattle, consider a grain byproduct like distillers grains or gluten feed as compared to corn grain. There is a negative relationship between corn grain and forages and the digestibility of the forage will decrease and we do not see that with the distillers grains. We don't not have studies for this specific feeding situation that yellow fat will be converted to white fat.