Cattle prices drop as supply increases
SASKATOON (Staff) – Slaughter cattle prices were still under pressure during the short Canada Day holiday week, despite greater numbers. “With one day less, we traded 13 percent more cattle,” Canfax said in its weekly market report. More steers especially are getting fatter and that’s hurting prices. Packers are preferring to buy slaughter heifers, Canfax reports, because of their lighter weights relative to steers. That situation doesn’t usually develop until August, and it’s an indication of just how big the steers are getting.
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Steer carcasses are running about 35 pounds more than they were at the same time last year. Heifer carcasses are about 20 pounds heavier.
While prices were lower in western Canada this week, cash prices stabilized and then strengthened by about $1 U.S. by week’s end. But that’s after trade early in the week sent some prices below $60 per cwt.
Feedlots on the Southern Plains, however, held back as many as 15 percent of the animals they had intended to sell.
Hogs and pigs bearish
American hog farmers caught the trade in Chicago flat-footed. The latest department of agriculture hogs and pigs inventory showed hog producers south of the border are aggressively expanding their herds.
As of June 1, the U.S. agriculture department said the total number of hogs in the U.S. stood at 103 percent compared to 1993. The numbers kept for breeding and marketing were also pegged three percent higher than a year ago. The March-May pig crop was measured at 104 percent.
The trade had estimated all three of those numbers were about the same as in 1993.
