Despite smaller cattle herds nationwide, Senior Loan Officer at Land O’ Lakes Thad Tharp states the beef industry is very active and calves are going for high prices at the sale barns:
“Calves are very high priced, so guys that are selling calves right now at the local sale barns are tickled to death for some of the money they are getting. If you look even out into the future markets, you can lock in a lot of profit on some of these calves. Now, bare in mind the last week has been good for the end user cattle feeder on the grain markets. The guy selling grain doesn’t like it when they knock that off there. There is still a lot of positive in the beef market going forward. A lot of the national analyst, they are a little too bullish for me, when everybody gets on the bull run, it makes me a little nervous that the bear is right behind. We will see what happens, but the beef industry is doing well.”
Tharp says with the cost of gains, prices on cattle at the sale barn are not done going up.
