By Kenny Burdine
The January Cattle on Feed report was released on Friday afternoon. Total on-feed inventory to start the year was estimated at a little over 11.8 million head, which is down by just under 1% from January of 2024. Even though feeder cattle supplies have been lower, feedlot inventories ran above year-ago levels for eight of twelve months in 2024 as lower feed prices encouraged longer feeding times. While I don’t want to read too much into it, this was the largest year-over-year decline since May.
Placements were once again the headliner of the report as they came in below, and outside the range of pre-report estimates. December 2024 placements were estimated at 1.64 million, which was 3.3% below December 2023. On the surface, this seemed logical as December represented a full month of not receiving live cattle imports from Mexico. This also marked the second month in a row with placement levels being more than 3% below year-ago.
Friday’s report was also a quarterly cattle-on-feed report, which means it included an estimate of the steer/heifer breakdown. In the absence of a July cattle inventory report, this has been one of the main indicators economists have been tracking for evidence of heifer retention. Heifers accounted for 38.7% of the total on-feed inventory on January 1, 2025. While this doesn’t speak to retention, it is worth noting that this is about 1% lower than last January and 1% lower than October 2024. So, it does bear watching as we move further into 2025. Again, I think imports from Mexico had some impact here as heifers had represented a higher than usual share of imports prior to the ban in late November.