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Cattle feeding shift continues
The shift in the concentration of cattle feeding, from the Southern Plains to the Corn Belt, continues.
David Anderson, livestock economist at Texas A&M University, has been watching the narrowing gap between the number one cattle feeding state, Texas, and number two Nebraska. The most recent cattle-on-feed report from the USDA showed that, as of December 1st, Texas had 2.51 million head on feed, while Nebraska had 2.43 million.
“There’s still more cattle on feed in Texas, but it’s the smallest difference on record in the data set that we have on the cattle-on-feed report,” Anderson says.
Anderson says feed availability and feed cost have been the big factors behind the shift.
“The close-by supplies of by-product feeds—bigger supplies of feed in the Corn Belt—has certainly given a little more comparative advantage to feeding cattle in Nebraska, or in the Corn Belt, relative to farther away.”
The other major factor, Anderson says, has been the “drought of historic magnitude in the Southern Plains that’s really cut into cow numbers and available calf supplies in the Southwest.”
In the latest report, Kansas ranks third in cattle-on-feed at 2.05 million, followed by Colorado at 970-thousand and Iowa at 610-thousand.
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