Justin Angell

My mother always told me that if I didn’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. When it comes to the cattle market, this is gonna be a very short article. If you haven’t heard, the cattle feeding industry has endured another cascading lower market after several things conspired against our unsinkable market.

Like the unsinkable Titanic, the live fed cattle market sank because primarily the June fed cattle board expired, making the $20 cwt lower August contract the spot month. The extreme heat wave in the upper Corn Belt really prevents cattle feeders from bulling up to fight the sliding market when they know this heat wave could kill hundreds of cattle any given day. Also, a detrimental factor was the closure of three major plants, Fort Morgan, Lexington, and Sauterton, Pennsylvania.

We don’t really need this shackle space because of our light supply of fed cattle; however, the thousands of program cattle and captive supply cattle previously processed at these three plants have been shifted to others and have reduced the demand for open market cattle that we have available. To put a number on it, the fed cattle market has belly flopped about $25 to $30 per hundred lower. Her high was around $2.65, but now Fat Cattle at $2.40 is a good price with many western Fat Cattle bringing less than $2.40.

This $450 per head less income per fed steer is now reflected in lower feeder and calf market. This lower market is also being influenced by rising grain prices. My commodity guy in Nebraska has told me for months corn is way underpriced. Even though we’re a lot lower, for the cow calf producer, calves are still historically very high.

Now the multi-million dollar question is what is next? Will the market bounce and run straight back up this fall into next spring or is this the beginning of a long downturn? My experience has shown me in the past the one thing we absolutely do not want to do as an industry, is hold cattle to try and feed our way out of them by making them gigantic.

In this scenario, our one big ace in the hole is a low supply of market ready fed cattle. Hopefully we are approaching a bottom that we can transform into a springboard by this fall. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to tell market direction for three more months.

We have had a lot of interest in bred, females and pairs. Look for the listings of various markets in these pages. We have available in Centralia and also our consignments at the F&T Livestock high noon cow sales coming up the first Tuesday of August and the first Tuesday of September.

A special shout out for a good customer. Greg will be getting knee replacements this fall so cannot calve his fall cow herd. August 4th The High Noon Cow sale will feature this 30 head complete disposal and also at least one group of four-year-olds potentially 3-1 red pairs with April and May calves exposed back to an Angus bull.

I’ve had several people tell me this month they are starting to think bred heifers are gonna get cheap because there’s a lot of them. I guess I should be flattered. Monthly readers will know this was an original thought from three months ago. So, I guess I concur, believing there will be a tremendous amount of bred heifers to calve next spring and that bred heifers would temporarily get cheaper this fall, allowing an opportunity for whoever was willing and able to do the work and manage the finances. Assuming we find a bottom in the fed cattle market soon, the good news is I don’t think by grass next spring, good pairs will be any cheaper than they are right now. $5000 to $6200 pairs will still be very common next spring.