Drought ---> Herd decisions

[Liveoak]

Sorry but this is not due to cows already being sold. This is not normal ...if so then explain WHY feedlots are closing? The past 2 years it has been busy all 12 months and no feed lots have closed down "for the winter"

Feedlot closings are a mystery to me. If drought conditions are forcing the sale of cattle, feedlots should be full or overflowing. Here in Texas many ranchers have sold a third or more of their herds due to the high price of hay. I could see a dip in feedlot animal numbers after the drought is over but not right now. So why do some close? Bad management maybe?

 

[Hay Feeder]

Feedlots closing or just not buying. Have they bought feed or contacted feed would be a clue either way. Maybe financing issues.
This summer a Department of Agricultrue retried market reopter brought up that same subject. He had been in Nebraska and seeing empty feedlots. He follows that pretty close as that was part of his old job. However that was this past summer and a good year in Neb.
Times are really changing and fast. Which direction I do not know.
I can not get grass where there is plenty of grass anyway. People are just hoarding everything hoping give another farmer the big ouchy.

 

[Trinity man]

The main reason, I would think, is because the biggest majority of Texas has already sold and hauled all their cattle to market. Most of which takes place in July and August. Some earlier in June even depending on when they start calving. But because of drought situations all over the state, people thinned out herds back in the early summer months. Sold off all the calves early too.

Now.....the worse of the drought stricken areas are gettin alot of rain. So therefore they are holdin onto what cows they have because the grass is growin, and there's moisture for winter graze planting. This time of year the salebarns aren't near as busy as they are earlier in the year anyway because of the time of year that we calve. They still have sales every week, but the numbers are way down.

For example....July 11, 2009 #s were 3656
Sept 26, 2009 #s were 2074
Feb 2009 #s were 1000
March 14, 2009 #s were 278
I'm sure Trinity man can give me numbers for this week, they aren't on the salebarn website yet.

One thing is they didn't have a sale on the 4th of July so they up for it the next week. Here is all of the sale Navasota had for 2009.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?startIndex=1&template=TemplateW&page=SearchLivestockCattleTXAuctions

 

[the_jersey_lilly_2000]

Very true.....I didn't think about that I just picked at random to show the difference in Numbers thru out the year here.

When you have a couple of consecutive years of dry weather......ranchers reduce the number of head they carry......so therefore they don't have the number of calves the next year.....put another year of dry weather into that equation.....and they reduce their stock somemore......Alot have sold down to bare bones numbers. With really no hay to carry them thru winter even with the reduced number of cows. You can't convince me that if there's not as many producin mama cows out there that the number of calves goin to the feedlots will not be reduced dramatically. I'm not sayin this is the ONLY reason feedlots are closing. The cost to feed those calves factors in too. Makes sense to me that if the ranchers themselves can't afford to feed them, that the feedlot isn't gonna have the same problem, with feed prices being what they are.

 

[Hay Feeder]

Cattle markets and cattle numbers are holding nothing to brag about here.
These sale barn owners are happy to see lower fuel prices so they can put wheels under the cattle to get them resold. BTW last winter Texas buyers were here buying all the 3 and 4 year old cows they could get. It took one buyer a couple of weeks to get what he wanted. For those of you that work at these auctions one would be amazed what directions these cattle go.
I got a check in my mail by mistake made out to our local sale barn from a Livestock Auction in central Tenn we are in Missouri. I always thought cattle went north and west of here.