Some Black on Friday Markets

Corn is steady from Wed Morning at 3.66

Beans Up .10 at 8.75

Wheat down .06 at 4.79

Cattle down .70 at 130.95

Hogs jumped 1.68 to 58.80. Turkeys ate so now they will buy pork?

Milk up,79 to 15.33

Have a great day and don't let your wife spend it all today.

Gary

Have you ever noticed that near everything is up on the day before Thanksgiving every year ??

Cattle at the sale barns are usually up the week before a holiday and the week after to make up for the interruption in the supply chain.

KEH

KEH what do fat cattle or finished cattle bring in the sale barns down there. Or where do the finished cattle end up.

Gary

I went through a bunch of Black Friday ads and found very little that I couldn't buy for the same price on any other day.

It's all hype. Double the price beforehand and then have a 50% off sale.

Gary, there is no finished cattle market here that I am aware of. If there is, it's probably a deal between the cattleman and the buyer. I haven't been to a sale since Oct 12 and prices have been dropping some since then. At that sale large bred cows were bring .$75 to $1.00 a pound and there weren't many of them. 540 lb. steers around $1.50. Below 500 lbs around $1.75. Not too many of them, most producers don't make steers and they bring about the same amount.One 1600 pound bull brought $.74., but there were very few bulls sold.

Bull story: I had posted earlier about someone's bull getting out of the stockyards just after one of my cousins had hauled him for a neighbor. I had been curious about what happened to the bull and finally cousin talked to bull owner and got part of the rest of the story. Bull owner had been trying to get him sold for a long time before they finally caught him. Owner estimated the weight at over 2000 pounds, cousin was doubtful. Anyway, stockyard estimated weight
at 1900 lbs.and paid owner $1.50 per pound, saying when they caught him they could settle up if need be. Latest word is that bull has been located in someone's pasture but they haven't been able to catch it. Glad he's not in my pasture.

KEH

So somebody buys those 500 pound steers and feeds them. Then were do they sell them. Or are they shipped to another region to be finished where there is a finish market.

Any cattle feed lots in the area.

Gary

No feed lots that I'm aware of. Feeder calves go west, maybe to the upper mid west, but a lot go to the Texas Panhandle where they used to grow lots of irrigated milo. Went by one panhandle feedlot many years ago that was feeding 20,000 head. The weather affects where calves are trucked to. In real cold weather they have to ship farther south.

There is also a market in Texas and Oklahoma for calves to be grazed on winter wheat. They would plant wheat early, buy calves a little later, and graze them on the wheat, taking them off the wheat in time for the wheat to mature and make a crop, partly fertilized by the calves, I guess. I don't know if any of this is still done. The weather has a lot to do with whether or not the process is successful.

I don't know how much of all this is still being done. Somebody in TX could comment on it.

KEH

(quoted from post at 18:57:31 11/27/15)
No feed lots that I'm aware of. Feeder calves go west, maybe to the upper mid west, but a lot go to the Texas Panhandle where they used to grow lots of irrigated milo. Went by one panhandle feedlot many years ago that was feeding 20,000 head. The weather affects where calves are trucked to. In real cold weather they have to ship farther south.

There is also a market in Texas and Oklahoma for calves to be grazed on winter wheat. They would plant wheat early, buy calves a little later, and graze them on the wheat, taking them off the wheat in time for the wheat to mature and make a crop, partly fertilized by the calves, I guess. I don't know if any of this is still done. The weather has a lot to do with whether or not the process is successful.

I don't know how much of all this is still being done. Somebody in TX could comment on it.

KEH

Click to expand...

I don't know about TX but in Arkansas it's still done. There are buyers at the local sale from OK, KS, MO and local that have winter pasture that needs grazed. The feeder market here is still pretty good for quality calves. Value-added steers in the 500# range will still sell for at or just above $2#. The uncertainty of the marked has made buyers less enthusiastic but for good calves there is still interest