Missouri sale barn owner says tight cattle supplies could push cattle prices even higher

The owner of one of the largest sale barns in the country says there’s room for cattle prices to move higher.

Jackie Moore with Joplin Regional Stockyards in Missouri says he’ll continue to monitor placements data. “These cattle on feed reports, I’d say over the next three, four, five months are going to be way under what it’s been being,” he says. “We got a lot of cattle on feed, just as many cattle as we had a year ago, but we’re going to see that dwindle down as we go through the fall. That just says that getting out to next spring, we’re going to be short fat cattle. So I think that’s where we’re at.”

He tells Brownfield supplies remain very tight. “We sell a lot of cattle and I just don’t know where they’re at,” he says. “Normally I do. So it looks to me like it’s a win-win, especially for the cow-calf guy, which he deserves it because most years he never made any money except the last three or four years.”

Moore says there’s an opportunity in the calf market, too. “If we get any wheat pasture, there’s a lot of feed around this part of the country,” he says. “A lot of silage, a lot of hay, a lot of grass, and we get some rain through the fall and get some wheat going, these calves are going to dang sure get higher than they are now.”