09/04/2026
2143 HD this week in Enid
Wednesday was the first sale we've had in a long time where the board wasn't completely sour only to be up on Thursday big. With some stability, feeders were up to $10 higher in and calves were up to $20 higher. Quality was attractive on the calves with all of them being unweaned. With the dollars per head off the cow and the volatile market, I sure can't see where weaning one as a cow-calf operator will pay whatsoever!
As equally exciting as Wednesday was, Thursday was tough in the cow trade. The high yielding cows and good bulls weren't much off last week's trade, but the average and poor cows that have been held at $20 over their value to the packer ran out of friends this week and brought their carcass value. I'm going to elaborate on this cow market and explain why we are here today and through that lense, imagine what will happen if everyone keeps their feeder heifers and turns bulls out on them!
Last year, the market started indicating we were short of beef in the United States and we needed pounds. Smaller operators and backgrounders that typically bought calves started knocking off the packer buyers on "feeding cows" to utilize cheap feeds and add value to their resources. Here in Enid, when were selling 2000 cows a week, maybe two loads would get spread amongst the packers and the rest went back to feed. Those cow feeders did an excellent job of managing their risks and forward contracted their inventory to ship when? Right now into the highest ground beef markets of the year. Now, those same packers that were happy to buy their supply early have told the cow feeders they WILL NOT be bidding any cows past October delivery, tied in with the Trump Beef Coupons for Brazil, and right when American producers start pulling their fall culls, we see where the leverage shifted.
How does that relate to keeping heifers? This market has downshifted into areas of $400-$600/hd losses for stocker operators who turned out on summer grasses. The temptation is to look at what bred heifers brought previously and then imagine your $2500-$2600 feeder heifer will be worth $3200-$4000 as a bred, then turn in the bulls. That is EXACTLY what the longs in the futures, the speculators of inventory surplus, and the packing industry is hoping you'll do. When they even smell that decision being made in the production they will charge you today for your future decisions and hammer this market so hard you'll wish you didn't own a cow!
I'm not bearish in nature and I hope my comments don't come off that I believe the sky is falling and it's time to jump ship. What I do believe is there is a generation of producers out there who were not in business 10 years ago or even back in Covid that have never seen a market go down. Possession has been profit for the last 5 years, we just crossed over into a place where possession is a loss and it's important to be honest about that and navigate accordingly! Know where you are in the cattle cycle, we don't go outside in shorts when it snows and you can't ignore the winter season of a market either.
If you sold your calves last year this time, fell into a coma and woke up to sell them again today you'll be surprised to see it's almost exactly the same from this day a year ago. Only those of us who spend every week in this market really know what has happened over the last 12 months and it's extremely difficult to reset your mind to a lower market and make plans from there. If we can help don't be cautious in calling, this is what we do!
See you next week.
-Dakota
