CattleFax Reflects on Cattle Inventory

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

USDA NASS numbers came out earlier this week telling a lot of people what we were already expecting. That is that the size of the U.S. cattle herd continues to shrink. Ahead of those numbers being released, I had a chance to talk to Matthew McQuagge. He is an analyst with CattleFax. If you are in the business, you know this analysis company. They said the numbers were going to be down ahead of time. And as they made that prediction, I asked Matthew how they would know – ubsequently, how we would know – when that switch gets flipped and we start to turn into rebuilding mode for the U.S. cattle herd…

“As we kind of watch those cattle on feed supplies and we particularly pay attention to those heifer rates within that overall herd, that’s what we kind of use to say, okay we’re starting to see expansion taking place. That means within another year we’ll hit the supply lows and it start to turn around. We saw attempts at that this past year but that didn’t work out. This year weather’s not supportive of it right now. Those increasing prices, the market is telling us to expand, we just are limited by weather.”

Again that is Matthew McQuagge from CattleFax. According to the latest numbers, the U.S. cattle inventory down 2%.