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Analyst expects 1M fewer cows come January
The nation’s beef cow herd, which was pegged at 30-point-five million head in last summer’s cattle inventory report, will probably decline by at least another one-million head in the next report that comes out in January.
That’s the prediction of cattle industry analyst Dr. Nevil Speer of Western Kentucky University.
“We’re probably going to end up somewhere (between) 29.2 to 29.5 million cows the first of January,” Speer says. “So we’re certainly not in a rebuilding mode by any stretch of the imagination, as we go forward.”
But for those producers who are able to hang on…
“Those guys that are left are highly competitive—they’re fairly favorable about what they’re doing,” Speer says. “I think those people that are left are getting a better control on their costs—and when this thing does turn around and they have some resources, I think they’re going to be rewarded very nicely on the other side of the market.”
But Speer a lot depends on a bumper corn crop and some moderation in feed grain prices in 2013, “because all of a sudden we can build that value back into feeder cattle—and a cow-calf guy is going to get rewarded very nicely a year from now for that.”
Speer made those comments at last week’s farm broadcasting convention in Kansas City.
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