The Texas Cattle Feeder’s Association represents feedlots in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and recently held their annual meeting. Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays is featuring comments from Mike Murphy with the CattleFax Organization about several topics including La Nina, corn prices, and beef on dairy crosses. Murphy was a speaker at the TCFA meeting in San Antonio.
He mentioned how the dry conditions stemming from the La Nina weather system constrict producers in growing feed, forage, and water supplies. “Overall, we’ll have to keep our eyes on our ability to see herd expansion from heifer retention at the cow calf level,” Murphy said.
He spoke about how the abundance of this year’s corn crop is keeping the corn prices down. “Corn is kind of at the four to four sixty level from the basis of a spot futures market. From a cattle feeder’s perspective, that translates to about a dollar fifteen to twenty total cost to gain,” he said. “More importantly, that sort of cost structure allows for those higher calf prices across the country.”
The difference between the fed cattle value and the total cost to gain, or value of gain, is another area where Murphy has observed changes in the market. Cattle feeders are feeding cattle longer and growing them larger than in the past making the cattle more efficient.
“As a cattle feeding industry, we have really embraced technology and that has helped our ability to make cattle better. We are more efficient than we were when we look at conversions and those types of things,” Murphy commented. “At the same time, we are creating animals from a cow calf sector that have the right sorts of frames to handle more muscle and fat, so we can make these cattle bigger. Fifteen hundred fifty-pound steers are not uncommon as a lightweight for a fed cattle animal.”
Murphy anticipates that over the next ten to fifteen years, weights will continue to trend higher as genetics become more precise.
He regards beef on dairy crosses as a positive for the industry saying the resulting animals are more efficient in conversions, and daily gains, and better qualified for branded beef programs. “The other thing is that we’ve created some sexed semen so we don’t have as many replacement heifers on the dairy side, and we’ve created more dairy influence to our dairy on beef crossed cattle which adds to the number of available supplied cattle available to be harvested. Overall, it is a very positive impact on the beef industry for sure.” 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 at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
