In less than a week, the cattle industry will get a lot of much-needed data about the state of the U.S. cattle herd.
Livestock economist Josh Maples says there’s one thing the industry is eyeing in today’s report. “Quarterly Cattle on Feed numbers are really important right now as we try to look for some signals of herd expansion,” he says.
This month’s Cattle on Feed report will include the percentage of heifers on feed. It comes out later today. Next week, the USDA will release its Cattle Inventory report for the first time in a year.
He tells Brownfield it’s a lot of information for the markets to digest. “I don’t think we’re going to see conflicting signals from these reports,” he says. “But I think they’re going to be pretty supportive of prices and I think the markets have already kind of priced a lot of that expectation in we know we have tight supplies.”
