National Cattlemen Engaging With CME Group To Make Cattle Futures Work As Intended- And At Other Options As Well

Sep 12, 2016

The huge jumps higher and lower on the live cattle and feeder cattle futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have caused a lot of concern within the beef cattle industry. Colin Woodall, who heads up with the Washington office of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, says members of his group have been very clear that everything that can be done to address the volitility issues being seen within the cattle futures needs to be done- that they have value to beef cattle producers and cattlemen do not want to lose these contracts, which have been good risk management tools done through the years.

Woodall says the members of NCBA are telling him that they want and need these tools in place, but they need to work the way in which they were intended.

Woodall's comments are featured in our latest Beef Buzz, as heard on Radio Oklahoma Ag Network stations across the region. He says the NCBA is committed to work with the CME Group, the body that owns and operates the Cattle Futures in their Chicago trading facilitites.

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Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.