Is The Set Aside Working?

[cowman]

Hopefully George Bush will tell us that the beef trade is on track to resume sometime in the new year. And barring another mad cow, we might get back to some semblance of order in the marketplace?
I really doubt we'll have any old cows heading south for a couple of years, so we'll need to come to grips with that? But I do suspect American buyers will be very active bidders for both fats and feeders, once that border opens.
I wonder if Cargill/IBP in Canada will go ahead with their planned expansions if Bush lays out a clear timeline today? They might decide they don't need the extra capacity?

[kpb]

15444, I agree that a glut would be created if it is the cow-calf guy that has the bulk of the set-aside calves to market in the fall because he wants to get out of them as quickly as possible. However it is my belief that the cow-calf rancher will, for the most part, either sell the set asides now, after he puts the tags in to collect the $200, or he will background them to, say 750 lbs. and then sell them to a grasser in the spring. I don't think most cow-calf guys where I am (Alberta) have the grass capacity to graze these little guys. So they'll tag 'em, collect the $200 and sell 'em. They'll for the most part, end up in the hands of the guys they normally end up in--the backgrounders and grassers. I'll grant you that some cow-calf guys will keep them but I don't think they'll be that many and I don't think they'll have an effect on the market. If you were a cow-calf guy in Alberta and you could tag them, collect your $200 and then sell them and get the going market price which is, for the most part, the same as the price for untagged calves, why would you keep them?