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Cattle industry continues to look for signs of herd expansion

A livestock economist says he doesn’t expect many surprises in Friday’s Cattle on Feed report.  

Josh Maples with Mississippi State University Extension says he anticipates a significant drop in marketings. “You look at steer and heifer slaughter in April, it was down 9.8% from where we were last April, looking at the daily slaughter data,” he says.  “So big drop there. April 2026 was the third lowest April of the past three decades. 

He tells Brownfield he’s looking for placements to also decline, “It’s just a question of how much lower.” 

Maples says slightly more than 5 million head were placed into feedlots during the first quarter, the lowest for Q1 since 1998. “We know we’ve got fewer cattle coming in and we know we’ve got fewer cattle going out of feedlots,” he says. “The placements numbers to me is going to be the one that’s kind of the biggest question mark, like it always is, as we try to get a picture of just how many feeder cattle are moving into feed lots and how long they’re staying there.” 

The report comes out Friday at 3pm Eastern/2pm Central.