Cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) headed up on Friday as market players awaited the impacts of a winter storm forecast to hit the US with heavy snow and freezing rain from the Central Plains to the East Coast, reported Reuters.
CME February live cattle futures settled up 2.100 cents at 236.925 cents per pound.
March feeder cattle futures ended up 0.900 cent at 360.175 cents per pound.
"Cattle prices rallied as the adverse weather is expected to negatively impact production and transportation," said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX, in a client note.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported on Friday that the number of cattle on feed in feedlots on January 1 was down 3% from a year ago, compared with an average trade analyst guess of down 3.2% from a year ago, with cattle supplies remaining tight and the size of the US herd at decade lows.
The USDA quoted the choice boxed beef cutout value at $368.92 per hundredweight (cwt) on Friday afternoon, up $1.47 from a day earlier. Select cuts rose by $0.66 to $362.39 per cwt.
Meatpacker Tyson Foods said on Friday it will temporarily continue to prepare beef for sale at a slaughterhouse it is closing in Lexington, Nebraska, offering a short reprieve to 9% of the facility's 3,200 workers. The company said in November it would close the beef plant around January 20 as tight cattle supplies raised costs for US processors.
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