Cattle Producers Having Trouble Finding Bids

Apr 27, 2020

With decreasing processing capacity, cattle inventories in Western Canada are starting to back up.

Brian Perillat is a Senior Analyst with Canfax.

"When we were killing in Western Canada, 50,000 head a week and now we're maybe killing 15,000 head...there's just not enough spots," he said. "The outlet to the U.S. is just not there either."

Perillat says prices have taken a big hit over the past couple of weeks.

"It's hardly a market in a way, there's some producers out there that can't get bids. There's a couple of smaller plants that are mainly buying a few cattle as they go, but obviously they're getting bombarded with potential cattle. We've seen prices drop dramatically. In some cases, some of the larger players haven't really got bids to take all of their cattle."

He notes on the bright side, cull cows are still flowing to the United States.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.