Cattle numbers and prices

[cowman]

How can anyone predict this market? It is like a yo-yo, up today down tommorrow. How did you like the fall market? Up one week down the next and then back up the next week! I think if you hit the right market it had more to do with luck than anything else? Of course you can always count on the tax money coming to town in late November/early December but even that was erratic this year?
By February it was all doom and gloom. What can you do? Maybe the feed just wasn't there to take them through to green grass and all the "experts" are saying the only place this market is going is down! So do you go out and buy expensive feed to feed to cattle that are dropping everyday in value? So you sell and voila up the market goes! How can you know? You can't.
If we don't get some grass this year us guys who are holding them might look like the biggest fools around? If we do get grass and that border cracks open we'll look like geniuses! In reality it is just luck, whether good or bad that determines how we do. I believe the time is coming when we need to have some sort of "Risk management" that will take away these collossal losses. I believe the grain boys are so far ahead of us in this regard that we need to do a lot of catching up if we hope to survive?

[kato]

Grass is not an option for us, we just barely have enough for the cows.

We are planning on finishing our bigger steers, and probably all of the heifers. They should be gone by end of June, or at least most of them. The lighter steers we will sell.

That said, if someone gave us an offer we couldn't refuse, the trucks would be in the yard so fast you wouldn't believe it! LOL

As for how many cattle are out there, I would like to know where they get their numbers, because no one has ever asked us. Just going by what's in the big feedlots is far from accurate this year.

Anyway, Tuesday should be interesting because we are going to test the waters down at the auction mart with a half a dozen of those lighter steers. I'll let you know how it turns out.

[rsomer]

An interesting source of cattle numbers in Alberta can be seen at:

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/rsb4829?opendocument

Includes summaries of all livestock inspections at markets, feedlots, packing plants etc. Imports and exports and destination too, U.S and other provinces.

2003 numbers tend to be way down from previous years across all categories. Could be from reduced herds due to 2002 drought or else calves are still on original farm and have not been brand inspected yet. For example 1 1/2 million fewer cattle were inspected in Alberta in 2003 than in 2002 and fewer were brand inspected in 2003 than in any of the previous seven years.