Last week’s Cattle on Feed Report didn’t appear to be a market mover. Kyle Bumsted, a livestock market analyst from Allendale, reacted to the numbers.
“I’m going to call it a neutral report here, with a very neutral tone. The average trade estimate for on-feed as of January one is 96.8 percent. That came in right at 96.8 percent, and it’s the lowest in nine years. Looking at it really quickly, the December placements were slightly higher than expected, but still the lowest in ten years. 93.5 is what they estimate was going in. It came in at 94.6. And then the marketing number was estimated at 101.5, and that came in at 101.8. That was marginally higher than expected. That’d be the highest in four years. So, all in all, I’m going to call this a neutral report here.”
Bumsted said there were signs of early heifer retention late last year, but that appears not to be the case early in 2026.
“Every three months, the USDA gives us a steer and heifer breakdown. And back in October, they had heifers at 38.1 percent, and that was down from 39.7 percent, suggesting that back then in October, we saw a little bit of light retention. But today is kind of the opposite. January one, heifers were at 38.7 percent versus 38.7 percent a year ago. So right now, on this report as of January one, it doesn’t really show any signs of retention here.”
He said the recent winter storm moving through cattle country likely will have a much bigger impact than the report.
“That’s correct. I’m really looking at the feeder cattle complex and looking at the southern sale barns here. We’re going to have a lot of sale barns that are closed. They’ve already called sales off and are saying we’re not going to have any sales next week, so that’s going to affect the number of feeder cattle going into that feeder cattle index number. And we also have January feeder cattle expiring next week, as far as futures and options. So, on Thursday, they’re going to expire and then get marked against the cash index. And if we were to keep these northern barns open and keep the salmon or keep the higher prices that we’re seeing out there in these northern barns, that could really put a skew on the index and really make for some fireworks towards the option expiration here next Thursday.”