Jake, I understand where you're coming from, and don't blame you. We had reasonable prices for our calves and culls before the disaster on May 20, and God knows we all miss them.
Bill, it's a pretty poor market still on feeders, etc. Cull cows is not even worth talking about. Lowest I've gotten for a open cow this spring was 10 cwt, and hightest 28.75 cwt. Talk about flushing money down the toilet, if you knew how much my cattle loans were to purchase them as breds a couple years back (over 1000 bucks a head) when our market was strong. Yes, we do have almost enough of a population to eat up our beef, and God bless them because they supported our industry through these tough times, however that trade agreement you mentioned at the end of the post? Here's the kicker. Although our government has not approved any new deals importing beef from other countries, there are many existing ones that are supplying beef to Canadian customers (Subway, etc) that must be honoured. From what I understand, Ontario and Quebec in particular are importing a fair bit of beef from the US, in part due to the fact that it's more practical to cross the border than pay extra to freight it across the praries.
Oldtimer, I read the report last night myself. Is it just a coincidence that bone-in beef cuts and hamburger from animals under 30 months with summer and all the bar-be-ques around the corner? Methinks not, but I'm very interested in seeing how quickly and far this progresses. Stay tuned for the continuing saga of "How The Stomach Turns".
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