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Could there be another drop in cattle placements?

University of Kentucky ag economist Kenny Burdine says all eyes will be on placements, especially after last month’s surprise. “There’s not going to be enough cattle imports from Mexico through Douglas (Arizona) to really show up and move the needle, I don’t think, on that August placement,” he says. 

He tells Brownfield he’s interested to see if the July placements were an anomaly.  “Or are we going to see another very large decrease in placements for August of this year,” he says.  “And that’s what I’m even most interested in looking at in that report.”

Jackie Moore, the owner of Joplin Regional Stockyards in Missouri, one of the largest sale barns in the country, says he expects another big drop in placements. “We didn’t place very many cattle in August,” he says.  “What cattle we did was all video cattle, but it would have been hardly anything going on anywhere.”

And, he says, “They tell me a lot of those calves, a lot of those cattle ended up going to Canada, so those cattle are not going to be there unless they got them in a background yard somewhere and the USDA counts them when they count the cattle.”

Average pre-report estimates have placements down more than 3 percent, all Cattle on Feed up nearly 2 percent, and marketings down nearly 4 percent.

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