December Feedlot Placements Surprise Traders, Hitting All-Time High

WASHINGTON, DC – USDA gave the cattle market plenty to talk about over the weekend when the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) suggested placements in feedlots during December hit their highest level for the final month of the year since the series began back in 1996.

The trade was looking for a 2.6 percent increase from 2020, and instead saw an increase of 6.5 percent which Ryan Ettner, a broker with Allendale says is a “pretty sizeable difference from expectations.”

Why such a large increase? He agrees that “the weather could very well be one of the reasons why that placements number was as high as it was.”

The actual on feed number, which counts the number of cattle and calves on feed for the slaughter market in the U.S. feedlots (with a capacity of at least 1,000 head), totaled 12 million on January 1, 2022, an increase of 1 percent over the same time one year earlier. According to USDA, this is the second-highest January 1 inventory in 26 years.

Marketings of fed cattle during the month of December hit 1.86 million head, slightly above December of 2020, and also represents the second-highest reading for December in series history, while other disappearance totaled 54,000 head during December, a 10 percent year over year decline.
(SOURCE: All Ag News)