Cattle Pricing Trends

Cattle prices have soared to unprecedented levels, driven in part by the ongoing issue of herd rebuilding. Brian Crossroads Co-Op regional manager, Brian Irey, shares his insights on why this could pose challenges for the industry.

“I think you have a problem that's twofold. After we had a massive kill off of cows two or three years ago. It has been really difficult for the rancher to retain heifers. With selling a heifer at 2000 bucks as a feeder, rather than putting them back into your herd as a replacement heifer, most of the ranchers have made the decision to sell that heifer as a feeder, and it makes good economic sense for them to do that. Compounding the issue was, early on, we had a lot of cattle in the US out of Mexico, where they continued horrific drought in the Sinaloa region. A couple of instances of screw worm have a surface, and that shut the cattle off from Mexico, from coming into the US.”

The US is still importing cattle from Canada, but there is a cap on the number of feeder cattle allowed in. Irey predicts this limitation will have an impact, especially as we move into the summer months.

“Not only are feeder cattle going to be incredibly high price, it is going to be very difficult to even find them in some instances.”

He adds that feedlots are shipping heavier cattle, which is helping with the beef supply situation, however, it does not help with cattle numbers.