The July Cattle on Feed Report showed the on-feed number slightly above last year. Dr. Derrell Peel, a livestock market economist with Oklahoma State University Extension, talks about the report numbers.
“The July Cattle on Feed Report showed placements in June at 93 percent of last year. That’s a little bit less, actually, than the pre-report estimates. Marketings in June were 91 percent of last year. That’s about on par with the expectations, which gives us a July One on-feed total that rounds up to 101 percent, but it’s just up a half a percent over last year.”
He says the report is bullish for beef.
“We are a little bit above last year’s numbers on-feed, but a little bit less than the pre-report estimates, so all in all, this is probably a little bit bullish report. The other thing that’s important to keep in mind here is that we had two less days in June of 2024 compared to a year ago. It doesn’t happen very often that we get two days difference in a year-to-year comparison of a month. And so that means that marketing number, for example, at 91 percent, if you adjust it for two fewer days, that’s basically a marketing number that’s even with a year ago, and so that’s a pretty respectable marketing number.”
Peel talks about the numbers for steers and heifers.
“So we get the breakdown of steers and heifers in the feedlot. The steers were up nearly one percent. Heifers were even with a year ago in terms of the number of heifers in the feedlot. When you look at heifers as a percent of the feedlot total, that’s the number we’ve been following pretty closely for the last couple of years, and it actually went back up, compared to the April quarter, so we’re right at 40 percent – 39.6 percent of all the cattle in the feedlot on July first were still heifers, so we’re continuing to feed a lot of heifers is the bottom line.”