The USDA Cattle Inventory report released on Friday, January 30, 2026, revealed that the total U.S. herd remains historically tight, with a total of 86.2 million head of cattle and calves. This is a slight decrease from the 86.5 million head reported on January 1, 2025.
Extension Livestock Market Economist Dr. Derrell Peel sees no major surprises from the report released on Friday. He tells Oklahoma Farm Report’s Ron Hays “But the overview is generally pretty close to what I expected. I mean, we were not looking for a big change one way or the other. If you had to summarize it, I guess you could say that we actually continued to get a little bit smaller in 2025. The beef cow herd came in a little bit smaller than the year ago for January 1 of 2026. And that was a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought it might be more closer to unchanged or even up slightly. But again, I’m not too surprised at what we’ve got here. And the all cattle inventory is down slightly as well. So, you know, taken together, we’re generally still trying to find a bottom in this thing.”
More on Beef Cow Numbers
One of the most important numbers that beef cattle producers watch from year to year is the Beef Cow Herd numbers. The total US Beef Cow herd dropped by 185,000 head from January 2025 to January 2026- down one percent to 27.607 million head. In the southern plains, Oklahoma saw a slight bump up on beef cow numbers- up 17,000 from a year ago- virtually flat at 1.966 million head. Oklahoma remains the second largest beef cow state in the US. Texas, number one easily, dropped one percent in beef cow numbers to 4.045 million head- off 30,000 beef cows from one year ago. Missouri, struggling with drought, dropped 60,000 beef cows in this report- remaining the third largest beef cow state at 1.806 million head.
Beef Heifer Replacement Numbers Slightly Higher
A number that offers some optimism for the growth of the herd going forward is the beef heifer replacement number- nationally up one percent from a year ago to 4.71 million head. Both Texas and Oklahoma had bigger replacement numbers than a year ago- Texas up 50,000 to 650,000 beef heifers being held for replacement and Oklahoma up 5,000 head to 345,000 head in the January 2026 report. Peel says “And you know, that’s not uncommon. If you go back even a decade to the last time we went through something like this. You know, Oklahoma turned the corner faster than the rest of the country in terms of starting that herd rebuilding process. So, you know, that’s, that’s probably not a surprise in some sense. Again, it’s pretty minimal at this point, but it is a positive sign as you look ahead to maybe where we go from here.”
Peel believes that the report tells us confirms that we will not have a rapid herd rebuild like we had a decade ago. He says “this has been a remarkably slow process. What this really does is just continue to extend the timeline on this process of trying to find a bottom and then start some herd rebuilding. Again, there’s some positive signs in here, but the fact of the matter is that we continued to get smaller last year by a little bit. So we really haven’t set that in motion to a very big extent yet. And we continue this story that this is a historically slow herd or cattle cycle from that standpoint.
The Story Remains the Same- Tight Cattle Supplies, Strong Cattle Prices and No Relief for Beef Prices
“You know, we’re still officially trying to find a bottom. We’re probably stabilizing here, but it’s a very slow process and we’re not going to rebuild very fast based on what we see here. And we’re stabilizing at a relatively small number. And that means what? Cattle prices remain strong and beef prices back to consumers. No relief in sight. Yeah, that’s exactly what it means. You know, we’re going to continue to see cattle prices supported with small numbers. Again, we haven’t, you know, this, this in replacement heifers is not enough to really put together much of a herd rebuild or really any at all.”
And Dr. Peel sums up this 2026 Inventory report with this- “I don’t see any major change in the story. I don’t think we have to change our expectations going forward. Again, we just kind of advanced the markers here one more set. to carry on this story. So I don’t see anything major in this report based on what I’ve had time to look at at this point.”
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
Key Inventory Findings (as of Jan 1, 2026)
- All Cattle and Calves: 86.2 million head, down slightly from 86.5 million in 2025.
- Beef Cows: 27.6 million head, a 1% decrease from the previous year.
- Milk Cows: 9.57 million head, a 2% increase compared to 2025.
- Replacement Heifers:
- Beef replacement heifers totaled 4.71 million head, up 1% from a year ago.
- Milk replacement heifers totaled 3.90 million head, down slightly.
- Steers (500+ lbs): 15.6 million head, down 1% from January 2025
