Rabobank’s senior beef analyst, Lance Zimmerman, talked in depth with Oklahoma Farm Report’s Ron Hays about strategically rebuilding the U.S.’s mama cow herd. Yesterday, Zimmerman and Hays discussed the beef market and why it is so important for producers to fill out NASS surveys. Click here to see that conversation.
According to Zimmerman, the days of liquidation are over. “In 2024, we finally stopped liquidating mama cows,” he said. “Year-to-day beef cow slaughter is down about seventeen to eighteen percent. Right now, year over year, we are seeing declines of over twenty percent in this fall run period where we typically would liquidate a lot of cows as we wean calves.”
Due to this, he expects the 2025 Cow Inventory Report to reflect numbers similar to those reported in 2024. Even still, he says that intentional rebuilding hasn’t yet begun evidenced by watching the fall run; the percentage of heifers in feeder cattle and calf sales, is still steady with the last several years, around 40%.
“We won’t see bigger herd numbers in all likelihood, certainly for 2025 and likely not any bigger for 2026,” he predicted. “We’ll be looking now to January 1, 2027’s report to hopefully start seeing some bigger cow and heifer numbers.”
He explained that so long as heifers are sent to feedyards, the beef supply will be maintained and the cow herd will remain steady.
Zimmerman advised producers to think ahead for their needs to start rebuilding next spring, but rather two and three years out. “Because we have liquidated the cow herd to such an extreme that now, you don’t have the cows and heifers coming behind them,” he said. “Consider the ages of your cow herd now, next year, and in two years, and start making heifer retention decisions now.”
He mentioned that bred heifers of average quality bring $2,500 – $3,000, and high-quality ones are in the $3,000 – $4,000 range. “You could probably take heifer calves right now, run them as feeders through the winter, decide whether to breed them next spring and you may have $2,600 to $2,700 in them by next fall. If you try to buy those replacement heifers, it’s going to cost you another $1,000 per head on top of that. If you have the resources and the genetics to carry those extra heifers over, be making those decisions today.”
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.
