UNITED STATES-SHORTAGE OF CATTLE FEED.
Ranchers in the U.S. southern plains are having to
adjust to dwindling wheat pastures because of the increasing dry weather but
they apparently aren’t moving cattle into the feedlots in large numbers.
Unlike other years when cattle coming off wheat went into the feedlots,
cattlemen aren’t being forced into this option this year. Cattlemen appear to
be taking advantage of better-than-expected winter grass pasture along with
some opportunities to feed hay from a good production year in 2008.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest cattle-on-feed report released
Friday showed the number of feeder cattle placed into the feedlots in December
was down about 3% from a year earlier.
The USDA on-feed report also showed an increase in the percentage of placed
feeder cattle that weighed 800 pounds or more, the heaviest weight category
reported. Other weight categories were down from a year earlier.
Those cattle were grown to these weights on some type of forage, whether it’s
wheat, grass or hay. Some also have spent time in a program that gets them
ready for the feedlot with some grain included in their diets.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s drought monitor shows
abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions throughout the Texas Panhandle,
eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, western Oklahoma and southwestern
Kansas. There is a finger of severe drought that comes up from central Texas
and gets into southern and southwestern Oklahoma.
Those areas are traditional wheat-grazing areas, but the dry weather is
stunting non-irrigated wheat fields, causing farmers and ranchers to remove the
cattle earlier than usual and put them someplace else.
Kim Anderson, agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University, said one
positive development for the industry is that cattlemen didn’t put as many
younger cattle out to pasture on the wheat last fall as they normally do,
although it was more than the previous year. This means they have fewer cattle
to move from wheat to someplace else.
Market analysts in the affected area said some of the wheat hasn’t grown
much, if any, over the winter. Further grazing could endanger a field’s ability
to produce a good crop, or the available forage has simply run out.
Further, because of dry conditions last fall, some wheat fields didn’t
germinate well enough to provide any pasture possibilities, Anderson said. This
is why producers put fewer than normal numbers on wheat pastures.
The USDA’s semi-annual cattle inventory report on Friday also told some
market analysts that placements of younger cattle into wheat pastures last fall
was related to fewer calves being available. David Hales, market analyst with
Hales Cattle Letter, emphasized in his weekly newsletter that last year’s calf
crop was 2% smaller than the year before, so there weren’t as many that needed
a winter home.
Daren Redfearn, extension forage specialist at Oklahoma State University,
said this winter’s weather has provided cattlemen with an unusual grazing
opportunity. While the dry weather has been bad for the wheat, it has been good
for dormant grasses in the pastures, he said.
Normally, winter’s snow, ice and rain will leach nutrients from the dormant
leaves of the pasture grass, Redfearn said. As a result, late-January, early
February pastures usually aren’t much better than a drylot for young cattle
destined for the feedlot.
A drylot is a penned area where young cattle or cows are fed a diet heavy in
forages as they grow.
So since pasture and last year’s hay is available, many cattle are being
moved out of the wheat and either onto grass or to the drylots, Redfearn said.
Cattlemen have options this year.
