10-8 IAN Lack of Cattle

10-8 IAN Lack of Cattle

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.

Lack of Cattle Catches up with Beef Industry. I got a newsletter from the Idaho Cattlemen’s Association with that as a headline so I picked up the horn and called Executive Director Wyatt Prescott: “Absolutely. Lack of Cattle is something that the industry has been watching quite closely. As you know over the course of the last several years there have been large droughts in different areas of the country and that crossed with the multitude of other factors, one of which being the value of grind meat have caused reduction in our domestic herd size and we saw at the start of this last month that feedlot inventory was at 9.88 million head which is down 7% from last year and is actually the smallest since 2003. Tell me something. When there is not enough of this great protein doesn’t that offer an excellent economic opportunity? The answer to that is that it is complicated. To some degree, from the cow-calf producers standpoint, absolutely because that is what they are missing is new feeder cattle but for the feed lot owners, we are so low on supply that their capacity is so high that they are competing to keep their inventory full, to keep their businesses going so they are actually having to buy these cattle because there are fewer numbers at a loss. They are planning to lose money on those cattle just to keep their business going. So essentially, there is not enough cattle for the feeders to feed.

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