Cattle numbers

Contraction of U.S. cattle supplies for beef. USDA livestock analyst Michael McConnell reveals. Speaker2: Fingers are going down, but the market hasn't seen as much cattle market, so that's kind of kept the inventory levels from falling even further. Speaker1: So looking at the numbers for the month of May, starting with cattle and calves and feedlots for slaughter markets. Speaker2: On June 1st, there was 11.44 million head of cattle in those feedlots, which was 1% lower than a year ago. That was the result of placements during the month of May totaling 1.89 million head, which was 8% lower than a year ago. Speaker1: Yet for marketing of fed, cattle. Speaker2: Marketing came in at 1.76 million head, which was 10% lower than a year ago. Although if you account for one fewer slaughter day, it was about 6% lower in this past May versus last May. Speaker1: But McConnell explains why cattle and feedlot marketing saw a greater month over month increase compared to placements, and inventory. Speaker2: Inventories are down slightly from where they were a year ago, but overall not as sharply down as what would be reflected by the placements. However, because marketing's have been relatively light for the past couple of weeks, that's kept the number of cattle available in the market to be relatively high. The number of cattle that we have in feedlots for more than 150 days is the highest that we've seen since we've started keeping track of those tallies. So overall, what we're seeing is relatively tight supplies but low marketing for the past couple of weeks, resulting in the fact that we have cattle there in the feedlots ready to be marketed. It's just a matter of markets doing their thing and have prices that both packers and feedlots can agree to to see the cattle move.