Largest impact on cattle prices?

[don]

having farmed/ranched for over thrty years i have seen some downturns and producers have continually been exiting the industry. unfortunately, the reaction of some of the the (temporary) survivors is to congratulate themselves on being smarter than the unfortunates. in some cases this is true but mostly the survivors are just on the treadmill for a while longer until the big players in the industry decide they need to swallow the equity of the (what are now) weaker players.

 

[QUESTION]

Mrs.G - i know i am not the only guy who budgets and runs numbers before i buy cows, again i do not take pleasure in the misfortune of others but i have sat in at enough cow sales in the last few years trying to buy more good young cows and been out bid and then watch the price get alot higher than i would spend and i do not know how those producers could make the math work. And now i am seeing those same cows come up for sale and the guys who out bid me are telling me that there is no money in the cattle business. Well yeah if you run a negative margin.All I guess i am saying is that beef is business and some have been foolhardy in their spending and for them i have no remorse for them. For those who have been taken down by things out of their control like BSE, anthrax, flooding, drought they have my sympathies. I have even helped those guys out, a guy who bought bull from me 2 years ago lost a big part of his herd to anthrax all his bulls and 40+ cows i gave him 2 of my old herd bulls to use at no cost. So i do have a heart but i do not suffer fools.