NASHVILLE, TENN. (RFD NEWS) — As drought conditions spread across key cattle-producing regions, markets are watching the U.S. cattle herd. Livestock expert Dr. Daryl Peel says the dry weather could slow efforts to expand the nation’s herd.
“I think what it means for the cattle industry, broadly speaking, is just that it’s providing more caution about any attempts we might be thinking about retaining heifers,” Peel said. “It’s going to really dampen those intentions, I think. Producers who might have been thinking about doing it now have some reason to reevaluate their forage situation.”
Later today, the industry will get a new look at herd conditions with the release of the Cattle on Feed report, and private estimates are already being released.
“On-feed numbers, expectations estimated about 1% or 2.5% compared to last year for the on-feed numbers,” explains Bob Mauer with Manduca Trading. “Placements number is 94.5, marketing’s number 89.4. So basically, that’s showing year-on-year—just based on the lower numbers that we’ve seen last year— we actually expect a little bit of an increase in the on-feed numbers. So maybe things have gotten low enough in terms of the on-feed numbers to where, actually, we start to see consistently higher numbers in terms of the expectations for the on-feeds going forward. But we’ll see how that plays out.”
The Cattle on Feed report is scheduled for release on Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. RFD News will provide online analysis of the report following its release.
