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Industry anxiously awaits Cattle Inventory numbers from USDA
The January Cattle Inventory report from the UDSA will be the first time in a year that the industry has had official data that will help determine if the nation’s cattle herd is growing. The total inventory includes the number of beef cows, milk cows, bulls, replacement heifers, other steers and heifers, and the number of calves born in the previous year by state and the U.S.
University of Kentucky livestock economist Kenny Burdine says there are three specific things he’s looking for in this report. He says his first stop is the total beef-cow numbers. From there, he says he’ll look at heifer retention. “Because I’ve not seen that number since January of 2024, and I want to see what the heifers being held for beef cow replacement looks like,” he says.
He tells Brownfield the USDA’s revisions also matter. “When the report comes out they’ll show, for example, year over year change, but it’ll be based on that revised number,” he says. “So if you go back and look at what the number was prior to that revision meaning, what you were working off of before, then you get a complete picture of the change.”
Burdine says he still doesn’t expect to see widespread expansion in the cattle herd. “The first half of 2024, I would probably have said that I look for beef cow numbers to be down 1 to 1 1/2 percent when the numbers come out for January 1 of this year,” he says. “I still think they’ll be down, but I think it’ll be probably something a bit under 1%.”
The report comes out Friday/today at 3pm Eastern/2pm Central.
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