US Cattle Producers are holding back many of the heifers being born on their ranches and plan to breed them and add them to their mama cow herds this year and next. That's how Jim Robb with the Livestock Market Information Center is interpreting the latest snapshot of the US beef cattle herd that was released by USDA this past week. Robb, in a conversation with Eric Atkinson of Agriculture Today. says that about 200,000 beef heifers have been retained with the intention of adding them to the US Beef Cow herd. This is the second year in a row where weather has cooperated in the southern great plains and allowed Texas and Oklahoma to be the epicenter of the of beef herd rebuilding in the US.
Jim Robb's comments are being featured in today's Beef Buzz.
The mid year Cattle Inventory report shows that the US Beef Cow Herd is back above thirty million head for the first time since mid year 2012- when drought caused massive liquidation in the southern great plains in the months following the July 2012 cattle industry count.
Robb adds that while beef heifers are being held back for herd rebuilding and, as a result, have been removed from the beef pipeline that delivers beef eventually to the consumer- there is still enough of an increase in the calf crop that means there are several hundred thousand more calves not yet in US feedlots and more beef on the hoof is now being produced and will push cattle prices slightly lower this fall and into 2016 in the face of rising beef supplies and huge amounts of competing meats.
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