Cattle futures decline felt in the High Plains

Cattle futures on Monday were sharply lower with feeders slipping $4 to $5.50 per hundredweight and fats were mostly $1.50 to $2.90 per hundredweight.

Last week fat cattle traded at $228 to $230 per hundredweight in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, with Nebraska trading at $238 to $241 per hundredweight. It wasn’t long ago that I thought $2 per pound fat cattle would probably never happen and now we have been to $2 and much higher. I guess I have gotten use to the sound of that where it seems the norm.

The western half of the United States is getting dry. Not long ago, I was in Arizona, and it looked to me that a cow better like to eat cactus or a green bush that apparently nothing liked or they would starve to death. Our little area in “No Man’s Land” we were fortunate to get a couple of small showers, which definitely helped.

This week I have been sorting heifers off an old wheat field with bindweed and crabgrass and the cattle have done very well.

There seems to be a lot of optimistic people in the cattle business. We have had about three turns of cattle that have made good money when at the time they were buying them they seemed high to me. A cattle feeder and stocker operator are a lot like a kid in the candy store. If they have money in their pocket they are going to spend it!

In Texas where the floods were I have seen posted a lot of acts of kindness. I have heard on the radio if you don’t seem to have a friend then be one. Most people that are unhappy if they would quit thinking about themself and start thinking of others they would soon be a lot happier.

Yesterday my sister gave food to a homeless man. Today he came to her house and gave her a recipe book.

My older sister and her husband took her two kids and their grandkids on a trip to Florida to the beach. They had decided to drive there. They were arriving home on Monday and I texted her and asked her, “Are you almost home?” She said, “Yes, but 16 hours is a long time to ride in the car.” Me being the agreeable person, I am of course I said, “Yes”, but then I added the words, “Yes that would be a long trip with any of you.”

Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the view of High Plains Journal. Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman who grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.