Futures had a brief tumble yet calf market is resilient
The cattle market has been a run-and-gun market with most all stocker and feeder buyers evidently betting on a better market.
Even with cattle futures falling hard Thursday and Friday it didn’t seem to have much effect even with some futures falling $12 to 14 per hundredweight in those two days. I wasn’t surprised there were still lots of willing buyers, but I was surprised the market stayed that good when we are at these high of levels.
However, most feel that available stocker and feeder cattle for the next two or three months will be in short supply, and a lot of grass cattle still need to be bought. I hear of many farmers wanting to graze out their wheat instead of harvest with these low grain prices. I ask several cattlemen what the drop in futures prices were about on Thursday and several said It might have to do with the talk of shutting down or remodeling a couple of packing houses.
Then Friday it seemed we heard more talk of war and Saturday it proved to be true. The packers are the master of manipulation, in my opinion, but haven’t been able to do as much these past two years with a shorter supply of fat cattle and also increased demand.
Cows are in strong demand with a baby bull calf bringing $1,100, which sounds high; however, keep him three months and he is worth $2,000 and sometimes more. Quite a few people are feeding older thin cows and feeding them long enough they call them a white fat cow.
The cattle market has been very good to a lot of us these past two years. I should be paying down on my debts some, but oh well, I can die with debts just as easy as I can with money and guess what they put us all in the same size of a box.
This past week my son, along with 18 other semis and long trailers, went to southeast Oklahoma to haul back donated bales of hay to fire victims. We are so blessed to live where people care.
This week a friend and me were both eating breakfast together. We both had cowboy hats on. A woman sitting next to us said, “Is there a cowboy event in town?” We said, “No that’s just the way we dress.” I said, “What are you here for?” The woman is probably 70 years ago. She said, “I’m here for wrestling.” So my friend said, “Oh are you wrestling in the adult division?” We all laughed and then she said, “No it’s my grandkids.”
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.
