Historical cull cow prices

[grassfarmer]

Can anyone tell me where to find historical (pre-BSE) cull cow prices showing seasonal prices and numbers marketed?
Thank you.

[PureCountry]

Try canfax.ca

If Canfax doesn't have it, I don't know who would.

[cowman]

grassfarmer:Can't give you any real data only what I have experienced.
Cull cows pre-BSE in the fall of 2002 weren't all that great, due to a glut from the drought. We sold quite a few that year and by November it was getting fairly ugly? The option was to go out and buy $180/ton hay, so we skidded them. Decent old cows(1500-1600 lb) sold for 38 cents a pound which we thought was a disaster...little did we realize how good that price was...pre BSE!
Before the drought British type cows were around 45-55 cents a pound. The smaller the cow usually the less per pound she brought...so a 1200 lb. British cow brought 45 cents while a bigger cow might go as high as 55 cents? Exotic cross cows sold for more maybe up to 62 cents and barley fed cows were right up there in that range or slightly higher. Obviously the exotic cross cows yielded a lot more lean meat that the British types?
Actually feeding cows for a short period(60-90 days) was fairly profitable...probably as good as feeding steers!
Of course different times of the year produced shortages and surplusses where the price would rise or fall. September and Jan-Feb seemed to be the peaks in my opinion.
It definitely made a lot of sense to raise these larger cows back in those days? Which is why everyone was doing it I guess? Yes it cost more to feed that large cow, but she produced what the market wanted(at that time)a large exotic cross calf that would gain like hell and hit the kill floor at under a year. The salvage value of these cows was not something to be sneezed at.
This sort of scenario was basically the norm since about the mid eighties.

[grassfarmer]

Thanks Cowman, I actually got some great historical data from Neil Blue at Alberta Ag, Vermillion. He is the manb to go to for marketing stats.