This is a guest post written by Frank Hendrix of Callipyge Genetics and Tenet® Beef.
I have a theory about why so many Pharo Cattle Company™ animals are testing positive for Tenet®. We’ve been working on the beef tenderness problem for 38 years. After successfully finding and then developing a DNA marker system for Tenet®, we were disappointed that only 2% of the cattle we tested were positive for Tenet®. If we rank tenderness from 1 to 10, the average American beef animal ranks 3 to 4 on a bell-shaped curve. In contrast, a Tenet® animal is 10.
While we were working on the Tenet® marking system, we noticed that cattle with very low maintenance energy requirements seemed to have a higher tendency to be positive for Tenet®. These are the “easy keeper” cows that look like they’ve been on supplemental feed when they are grazing dormant winter grass with no supplements. Kit wrote an article about Low Maintenance in the January 29th PCC Update.
Kit Pharo and I had never met or crossed paths until September of 2024. I had read his Summer 2024 newsletter and liked what I read. I asked Kit about testing some PCC™ cattle since he had been selecting for “easy keepers” for nearly four decades. Kit doesn’t call them easy keepers; that’s what I call them. I had to bother Kit several times before he finally agreed to allow testing of the PCC™ AI sires.
If we had found 10 Tenet® bulls in his AI Sire Directory, I would have been happy. We found 57 (64%) that were Certified Tenet®. We originally thought there had to be a problem at the lab, but after multiple checks we concluded Pharo Cattle Company™ has a staggeringly high level of Tenet® cattle. While they were selecting for efficient and profitable cattle, they were unknowingly selecting for the highest level of beef quality, i.e. Tenet®.
I thank God for bringing Kit and me together. Together, Tenet® Beef and Pharo Cattle Company™ are on an exciting venture to make some huge and beneficial changes within the American Beef Industry.