Building Back (A Small Cattle Herd) Better
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.
It may or may not be “better,” but building back the U.S. cattle herd has been a hot topic as inventory numbers have catapulted lower in recent years. How will we know when the process is starting?
Dr. Scott Brown is an Associate Extension Professor of Markets and Policy at the University of Missouri…
“Watch that quarterly cattle on feed number. We get the percentage of heifers on feed once a quarter. We need that to get down below 35 percent. That’s a sure sign we’re holding heifers. And then, second, we need cow slaughter to get lower before we’ll say we’re holding back cows.”
But his projection is that we’re not there yet…
“I currently expect January 1 of 2024 beef cow inventory will still be lower. I think it’s tough to know the exact turn here at this point, but I tell folks all the time don’t think this cycle is going to be exactly like what we went through in 2014.”
According to Brown, back in 2014-2015, we were coming off of very high corn prices because of the drought of 2012, but corn prices were back below $4 a bushel. He adds that he hopes we don’t see corn below $4 a bushel for corn producers anytime soon but that it’s just different right now.
