Payne County Rust Fat Types

How I love thee fat, let me count the ways...let's discuss the different types of fat. Let’s see, the main categories are KPH, subcutaneous, inter-muscular, and intra-muscular fat. KPH stands for Kidney-Pelvic-Heart fat and is the fat that most mammals have inside their abdominal and chest cavities that insulates their organs and serves as an energy store. Pretty much useless unless you’re making sausage and need some big hunks of pork KPH fat—often called kidney suet. Next is subcutaneous or seam fat. This is the fat we can see in the phenotype of an animal. It’s the fat that resides just under the surface of the skin, hence the name. It is also the fat that you see wrapping around the outside of your ribeye. Inter-muscular fat is the fat that lies between the different muscles in a muscle group. This is also known as feathering or ribbon fat. Last and most important is intra-muscular fat. This is the star of the show, and is last fat to be deposited in the body of the cow after KPH, subcutaneous, and inter-muscular respectively. This is why we finish cattle off in feed lots, pushing their bodies to store so much fat that they finally resort to storing it in the muscle itself. This adds SO MUCH flavor! Marbling amount is also largely affected by the genetics of the particular animal. A whole quality grade system is employed just to decide where a particular cow falls with respect to marbling amount.

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