USDA feeder cattle market: Fed cattle trade turns active Friday

Compared to last week, yearling feeder cattle sold mostly steady while calf prices traded fully steady to 5.00 higher. The light weight calves under 500 lbs saw the most advance and continue to find the most buying interest as buyers are looking at total dollars per head and options these calves bring to the backgrounder.

Featherweight calves under 400 lbs are easily topping the 2.00/lb level in many auctions throughout the country.

Backgrounders are buying these lightweight calves on ideas that calves will be worth more down the road and harder to find going onto fall even though we are experiencing high grain prices.

Feeder cattle have found a lot of friends in the last 3-4 weeks finding better exposure in the buying sector as buying interest and demand remain very good with many acres of corn going into silage.

With many farmers and ranchers selling calves early and in many cases bringing the cows along for the ride, cattle buyers are banking that there will be some opportunities and advantages that these cattle will be a good investment to own going into next year.

As we see many cows being sold through culling and herd dispersals, looking into the near future we are seeing fewer cattle and fewer pasture acres.

Though drought conditions are still very much prevalent some decent rains fell across the Western Corn Belt and parts of the Southern Plains last weekend and helped to relieve dry conditions and with Hurricane Isaac hopefully bringing valuable moisture ahead of this fall’s wheat and rye pastures for grazing appear more promising than it appeared 30 days ago and also the boost it brings to one’s spirit to see that it can rain.

Fed cattle trade turned active Friday morning with live sales in the Southern Plains trading from 122.00 to mostly 123.00, 2.00-3.00 higher than last week. Dressed sales in Nebraska traded Thursday afternoon at 190.00, 2.00-3.00 higher than last week going into Labor Day weekend.

With Labor Day weekend buying in place retail beef prices could expect competing meats to be featured aggressively with price spreads between beef and pork/chicken. After making some good advances Choice Boxed Beef prices leveled off this week closing 1.21 lower on Friday at 189.62 for Choice product. Reported auction volume included 51 percent over 600 lbs and 42 percent heifers.

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