There are many wondering if we’ll see a rebuilding of the U.S. cattle inventories here in 2025. Rusty Halvorson has the story.
The process of rebuilding U.S. cattle inventories will remain an ongoing question well into 2025.
Texas A&M extension livestock economist David Anderson says coming into 2024, the beef cow herd was at a 63-year low, which was the smallest beef cow inventory since 1961.
“We really just don’t have much evidence of expansion starting. And I think that’s for some good reasons. One, certainly, take a look at the drought monitor and look at how dry it has been in parts of particularly a lot of Texas, but a lot of parts of the rest of the country as well. Drought really holds back our ability to expand even when prices say there’s an opportunity.”
Anderson says he’ll be watching the next few Cattle on Feed reports.
“Particularly, the quarterly reports, because those quarterly reports give us this split-out of the number of steers and heifers on-feed. What we’ve seen so far is the number of heifers on-feed continues to be pretty large – really indicative that those heifers have not been held on the ranch. They continue to go to feedlots. Now, the On Feed report is a little bit backwards looking. So, if we really started expansion out of this year’s calves, we might not really see that in the Cattle on Feed report yet.”
The next Cattle on Feed Report comes out on January 24th.