Removing Non-Performing Animals from Your Feedlot

Culling is the process of removing animals from a group based on specific criteria. This is done either to reinforce certain desirable characteristics or to extract certain undesirable characteristics from the group. In feedlots, the purpose would be to remove animals with undesirable characteristics from the group

The word comes from the Latin colligere, which means "to collect". The term can be applied broadly to mean sorting a collection into two groups: one that will be kept and one that will be rejected. The cull is the set of items rejected during the selection process.

Since livestock in feedlots is reared for the production of meat, the herd must be culled to ensure that only performing animals are kept on the expensive feeding and treatment system. Animals not selected to remain are sent to the slaughterhouse, sold, or killed.

Criteria for culling livestock and production animals are based on production norms. In a feedlot situation the culling process involves selection and the selling of stock that does not meet the growth norms.