Dave, that was a decent price for the steers. They ought to gain good for you. You're right, those cow/cf pairs were way too high if they were basically all one and dones.....
Guy that has worked for us off and on since school is now a grader part-time, at a few of the livestock markets. He said that when he went to the one sale he does every week, the cull cows were from .60 to .75 that morning, and when the news of the plant shutting down in Pa (old taylor plant now owned by JBS) the price on the culls dropped to .35 to .45...... They had to honor the ones that were there earlier, the culls don't go through the ring at this sale, they are weighed and "graded" (cutters, boners, etc.) and the sellers paid accordingly..... can you imagine someone taking a load in at 6 a.m. and then coming back with another load at 11 a.m., and the difference in the prices????? But, this is mostly going to affect us here in the east as this plant takes ALOT of cattle from these eastern markets and does some of everything. Va, Pa, Md, NY, and surrounding areas. No suggestions of when it might re-open either.... Since Pa and NY are seeing a fast rise in the C-virus cases, that is probably going to be a direct influence.
Also, diesel prices here have been dropping and we paid 1.99 for on road diesel the other day. Plus, it is 50 cetane which is better than the 40 cetane that most are, and we feel that the trucks run better on it too. I told my son that he needed to get the tank cleaned out, it has some old fuel in the bottom, and get a load while the Saudis and Russia are having a pissing contest and not wanting to cut production. Well, they announced this morning that they have agreed to cut production and the price of oil (barrel) here in the US went up nearly 20%.... I had ordered my fuel tank here at the house to get filled, so I will be okay..... I sure hope that he got the tank cleaned out and the diesel for it ordered. They change their price once a week on Monday usually. It will be interesting to see what the prices are going to do tomorrow at the stock yard. I won't be able to go because of regs..... I do have to go see about paying on my feed bill, and see if one of the guys can get the feed bin cleaned out so I can get a load of poultry feed so that when I get the next bunch of meat birds, I will have the feed already there.
Saw a list just recently that the number of replacement heifers is still dropping as they are still putting more on feed than keeping back, so that the consensus is that the prices ought to improve in the 2021-22 years. Of course, who knows with this C-virus mess.