Justin Angell

Most recent news is the cattle on feed report published one week before our print date. It was neutral to maybe a little bearish, but I listened to Scott Brown from University of Missouri detail a lot of industry information, including these interesting snippets.

The fat cattle market this week is up over $1.90 again with choice box beef at $3.15, which is $16 higher than a year ago. Beef slaughter year over year is down 3.8% but beef production is only down .3%.

As we have reported, heavyweight carcasses continue to buffer any cattle shortage with September average carcass weight at 862 pounds compared with an average in 2023 weight of 828 pounds. Cold storage year over year is only down 3%, which indicates no demand issues even with beef at record high prices.

According to Brown, the beef cow slaughter is 16% lower than one year ago. September cattle on feed report tells us heifer slaughter is at 40%, also indicating no herd growth.

The only data I can draw issue with is Brown’s information showing no increase in heifer retention. No hill I’d wanna die on because numbers are numbers coming out of a packing house, but I was feeling like there is heifer retention beginning, but I could be wrong with widespread dry conditions over most of the high plains.

Last stage in the ascending cattle cycle, heifer retention pulls heifers out of the beef chain, causing a decrease in meat production, and generally an increase in prices, assuming demand stays strong. I believe we had the beginning of heifer retention last fall, but when spring rolled around, the price for yearling heifers pulled many of those replacement heifers back into the beef chain.

The calf market is very high historically, but the yearling market is higher. If you’re a cow calf producer and you’d be happy selling $1200 to $1600 calves, it’s time to ring the register. If you background your raised calves or buy calves to background, I think there is an opportunity to get calves feedlot ready to make another $200 per head.

Feed is cheap and if we begin pulling heifers out for replacements like I suspect, along with a timely widespread rain, there’s no telling how high calves and yearlings can get in the spring as they follow the fed cattle market to all-time highs.

Looking at the markets this fall, we have already blown through over half the fall calf run with no severe dip in prices.

A very good chance with liquidity increasing all over the world all assets (gold, silver, bitcoin, stock, markets, etc.) including commodities are probably entering a higher price cycle… In other words, if you’re waiting for cattle to get cheaper, it is probably not going to happen because one of these days cattle might get high.

Short report this month. I can’t really have an opinion on the future of anything until Election Day passes. I’ll step out on the limb and predict Trump will ride a red wave all the way to the White House.

Tucker Carlson asked Elon Musk. What happens if Trump does not win? Elon had a very eloquent answer… That I cannot repeat and print. Let’s just say that if Trump does not win, that would be redundantly bad for all of us irredeemable deplorables.