A lot of people would have thought, including myself, taking a plant strike out would have probably put a lid or taking cattle prices lower. And honestly, I think packer margins slid in there and it kind of helped it out. We've seen the futures market in the last couple of weeks really push higher.
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Announcer:Value added nutrition partners trusted by cattle producers across the country. Now here are your hosts, Ty deCordova and Casey Mabry.
Ty deCordova:Welcome to the We Live It Midweek Market Update. Thank you guys for joining us out there on social media land. Casey and I here today just gonna kind of touch base on some of this wild market that's going on, all the different things that's going on that's tried to try to shake this thing down, but, just seems to have resilience. And every time you think it's gonna just keep falling, this thing keeps going up. Casey kind of fill us in.
Ty deCordova:I mean, high fuel prices, awards, plants striking, all this other stuff going on. They they've hit us with everything they can in this market. Just kind of keeps, keeps staying resilient, kinda fill us in on what that looks like.
Casey Mabry:Yeah, Ty, I mean, resilience is probably the best, best word to describe it for sure. I mean, it's been impressive as far as the rally goes. I mean, if we go back and think about where we were even right there, right before we got to January, you know, back in November and December, when we had a plant closure there at Lexington, I mean, there was lots of doom and gloom in the market for sure. You know, a lot of people that were fearful about what was gonna happen and take place as we went forward. And really you've thrown a lot of negative news at the market, and then the market just continues to be resilient for the most part.
Casey Mabry:Let's think about all the different activities. So at the February or so, there was lots of discussion around the Greeley plant strike. And there was a lot of naysayers on that and saying that we weren't gonna strike because the last strike that we had seen, I mean, if you remember, we were talking to Dick Mofford about that. I think he probably had the last plant strike and that would've been in the late eighties. And so a lot of times we get these, you know, unions to where they get pretty tough with the packer, and they find some common ground to come on.
Casey Mabry:And today we haven't seen that common ground. And so you got in about three weeks ago, and that plant officially did go on strike. And then you got those employees, walking the picket line there. So you got about 3,800 employees that have been displaced or not going to work there in Greeley. And so you've taken a lot of those cattle to JBS's other plants.
Casey Mabry:We have seen some slaughter constraint because immediately when that occurred, we took boxed beef prices higher. We took live cattle prices, you know, kind of flat to lower. And we saw the packer margin increase quite a bit. So most of the time when you see the packer margin improve like it did in that scenario, you'd see the packer ramp kills up. We haven't seen the packer ramp up kills.
Casey Mabry:I mean, we got these steer and heifer slaughters running right around that four ten area, which is extremely small. You gotta think back to a couple years ago, we were killing 500,000. Right now, we're killing 410,000. And so, there's some of us that would probably say, Well, there's not enough cattle out there to kill. But quite honestly, I think that given the current situation where we're at with cattle price and corn price and that big spread that we've got and the margin that there is to just continue to feed cattle longer, we're just gonna make cattle bigger.
Casey Mabry:And I think that's what's going on right now for sure. That's lent a lot of support to the market. A lot of people would have thought, including myself, taking a plant strike out would have probably put a lid or taking cattle prices lower. And honestly, I think packer margins slid in there and it kind of helped it out. We've seen the futures market in the last couple of weeks really push higher.
Casey Mabry:Last week, we saw the market pretty much advance every day. We ended there on, on Friday with the market going up $4 on live cattle. And then we come into this week, and we get a continuation of that. We had the market up about buck and a half yesterday, and then we closed the market here today at $3 there in the June contract. We've now, from a technical standpoint, filled the gaps that we left back in November, which I didn't think, quite honestly, that we would ever get those filled because the market had broken and been depressed so much.
Casey Mabry:But again, today we filled those gaps going into the close. We got this June contract back at $2.43 and a quarter, August contract at $2.39 80. You got feeders like May feeders, $3.66, 47. Today on the close at $5.15. August feeders at $3.64, 42.
Casey Mabry:That's up $4.80 twos. Again, feeders continue to be extremely resilient. And you guys probably can touch base on that more so than I can from a fundamental standpoint, but that market's been impressive as well.
Ty deCordova:Yeah. We've seen kind of lots of activity, lots of demand. Mean, the sheer fact of the problem that's still the problem. The inventory, it seems to be still the problem. So you still got these guys in the cash market still fighting over these things and doing quite well.
Ty deCordova:Demand is straight across the board for everything. I mean, you're seeing a lot of demand out there. We had our sale in Ohio last week. Just the demand in that deal was just unbelievable.
Casey Mabry:Yeah, I think it feels like we're back to that time period, you know, where we would have been a year or so ago or two years ago where it's like every sale that you get, you kind of high fiving each other. And the next week you're like, man, why to sell them things so cheap? You know? I imagine. No, I think these feed yards and even the grazing guys are really working their tails off to get that inventory around them.
Casey Mabry:And it's a game of kind of haves and have nots here for a minute for sure.
Ty deCordova:A lot of them guys are staying up front too and keeping them things pretty current and they've done a good job of it, keeping the cattle bought up. But, well, just wanted to touch base on that. Didn't wanna keep everybody long here, just kind of give them a little insight on the market and Casey's knowledge. That's kind of like to pick Casey's brain quite often. So it's, it's good to sit here and visit with you, Casey, and thanks for helping kind of guide us through some of these ups and downs.
Ty deCordova:It has been a rollercoaster for sure. So I guess we wrapped up kind of show calf season and show pig season here the last week, last week or so for y'all and a lot of this last week for me, kind of looked like y'all had a, your family had a good run here all, all through the stock show season. Your brother kind of went out with a bang there in Houston, which was pretty awesome. I had to be pretty good for the family. So we're just y'all kind of glad to be, be over for just a little while.
Casey Mabry:Yeah. You know, if you talk to Brad, I imagine those boys are pretty excited that he's got there. Landry winning Houston, with that Barrow. That's something that's been a lifelong goal, that we've had. I mean, honestly, you think back to when even we were kids, we'd sit there and think about it and never thought anything like that was ever possible, but it was pretty cool to see my brother and his family get that done, you know, and that animal that they had there was extremely special.
Casey Mabry:But as far as, like, on our side, yeah, I mean, we're pretty excited to kinda get back to normal and have the girls going. And I say they're back in school. I mean, they they were today, they had a livestock judging contest that they went to. And so I imagine their teachers are trying to figure out if they even have those kids in their class or what they are, you know, so they are trying to get their school in order. And, you know, I've been on their on their tail, you know, to make sure that they don't drop their grades and everything's been pretty good on that front.
Casey Mabry:I imagine you guys are probably dealing with the same stuff.
Ty deCordova:Yeah. It's like twisting arms and making them do, I mean, just stuff they just gotta sit down and do. And it's like, you know how it is, just making them get it done. Because heck, I don't know if they're for a little while, I don't know if they went to school for a month. It seemed like it was gone every week and then they had spring break and was gone another week.
Ty deCordova:But part of it, we love it. We love, we love doing it. We love being in the barn where we already got four baby five babies in the barn already for next year. So but no state.
Casey Mabry:We're starting to get our we're starting to get our feel on that too. Our county shows in late in a weird time. It's in June. So we got some animals that were starting to that were neglected here for the last, you know, three or four weeks that we're starting to kind of focus on there and then put together some stuff for the state fair. But I'll tell you one thing that, my daughter and this is pretty cool, Ty's, and it kinda makes me feel a little bit good about what we're doing, you know, is Avery and I got back from, Austin.
Casey Mabry:And it was just her and I in the barn, and we were going through there, and it was it kinda looked like a little bit of a war zone. I mean, everything's kinda, like, spilt over and the pens are empty, and we're trying to, like, you know, kinda get everything a little organized. And I looked over at her, and she kinda had her head down and was looking to the side, and and she's just, you know, kinda I was like, what are you doing? She's like, I'm crying. You know?
Casey Mabry:And I was like I said, what's going on? I was like, you'd think that she'd just be completely over it. And she's and like, man, I miss all those Barra's that we had in here. Know? And she's like, I don't everything's gonna slow down.
Casey Mabry:It's gonna get boring. It's like she had the, you know, the blues at the end of the stock show season. You know? I'm, like, kinda fist pumping, getting them all off the feed bill and having to have the ability to take a breath for a minute. And that kid, she just wanted to go right back at it and hammer it down again.
Casey Mabry:You know? So it's kinda cool that those kids, they find, you know, what I'd say joy or excitement in the work part of it, you know, and enjoying that versus, you know, like, trying to move on to the next thing or whatever, you know, a 14 year old girl's interested in, you know?
Ty deCordova:So No. No.
Casey Mabry:That's I think I think you gotta take time to kinda think back through some of those things. And for me as a parent, my wife and I, we gotta, like, make sure we remain focused on that.
Ty deCordova:Well, Casey, thank you for joining us today and giving us a little update. We appreciate it. And thank you everybody out there for listening to us. If you have any questions, shoot them in the comment section or katielive ag dot com. You can text her anything, or if you want to be a part of one of these midweek updates or even the Weed Live It podcast, just reach out to katielive ag dot com.
Ty deCordova:Thanks everybody. God bless.
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