2016 A Year Of Expansion? USDA's Next Cattle Inventory Report Will Confirm Derrell Peel's Suspicions

At the end of this month, USDA will release its Cattle Inventory report, illustrating in comprehensive detail, just exactly how large our current cow herd is as of the first of the year. Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays reached out to Dr. Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University livestock market economist, to get his predictions on what the report might reveal about cow herd expansion this past year in 2016, and what clues there might be relative to what could be expected to come this year. Peel says that without a mid-year report for 2016, the first step is to confirm what we already suspect about last year.

“I think it was an expansionary year - slower than 2015, but I’m expecting at this point we’ll see the beef cow herd, from the beginning of 2016 to the beginning of this year expanded somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 2 percent,” Peel said. “That said, if you look at the way beef cow slaughter and heifer slaughter changed in the second half of 2016, it would certainly suggest that we are putting the brakes on that herd expansion.”

In terms of future expectations for 2017, Dr. Peel says he would not be surprised to see little to no growth, potentially even some liquidation, although he really doesn’t expect that to be the case. He says he will be looking in particular at replacement heifer inventory for clues as to how things may unfold over the coming months. However, Peel hypothesizes that should we see growth in the report, beef cow numbers are likely to start plateauing as we move through 2017.