High Cattle Prices

[Briar Lee]

What color were those cows again?

I’m not sayin’ Amish girls are gold diggers,

But you don’t find them messin’ with no poor Amish.

Henry has both, a mother still living AND a wife, and they live in sight of each other!

And there’s little Nathaniel and Leonard watching Daddy’s every move, every gesture, the way he walks, and what color cattle he buys and sells.

They too, will want a wife someday, their mother approves of.

They gotta build their sweeties brand new houses and buy brand new buggies pulled by slick Standardbreds that will trot all day at 25 miles an hour—-and their sweetie won’t be working on the farm one, tiny, bit to pay for all that, no they will not.

Xxxx

Black cows, particularly those of the Angus breed, often fetch a premium price because of their reputation for high-quality meat with excellent marbling, which is associated with better taste and tenderness, and this preference for black hides has become ingrained in the beef market, leading to higher demand and consequently, a premium price for black cattle compared to other colors.

Key points about the premium for black cows:

• Angus breed association:
  The most common black cow breed is the Angus, which is widely recognized for its superior meat quality and genetics, leading to the association of "black" with high-quality beef.
  
  
• Marbling:
  Black Angus cattle are known for their high level of marbling, the intramuscular fat that contributes to tenderness and flavor.
  
  
• Market demand:
  Due to the consumer preference for Angus-style beef, buyers often prioritize black-hided cattle, driving up their price at the market.
  
  
• Certified Angus Beef (CAB):
  Many packing plants offer premiums for cattle that meet specific quality standards, including a predominantly black hide, further incentivizing producers to raise black cattle.

Xxxx

You know what I like most about Henry?

When I’m at my camper at the farm, and he feeds and checks his cattle, when I offer him supper he always, makes an excuse to go home to his wife and children. Every time. Those hooves clatter right on back over the hill to Mama.

Sing one, Jody

 

[wyfbane]

How long do you think record beef prices will last?

Depends on how many of our remaining processing plants catch fire...

 

[Briar Lee]

Depends on how many of our remaining processing plants catch fire...

A serious question.

When I was a kid there were huge packers in places like the Omaha and Kansas City and Chicago stockyards. Those are all gone.

I hate to put it this way, but where do the huge ag businesses hide all the slaughter plants?.

 

[Servant King]

But you can't eat diamonds

Sure you can. It's the chewing part that's problematic.

 

[wyfbane]

A serious question.

When I was a kid there were huge packers in places like the Omaha and Kansas City and Chicago stockyards. Those are all gone.

I hate to put it this way, but where do the huge ag businesses hide all the slaughter plants?.

They don't. The brazilians own what we have left and our capacity is greatly diminished. That is why we pay $4/lb more for every cut of meat.

 

[Briar Lee]

They don't. The brazilians own what we have left and our capacity is greatly diminished. That is why we pay $4/lb more for every cut of meat.

Henry could load up 50,000 pounds of 5-600 pound calves and put them on a truck and he’d get a check for about $170,000, or 3.40 a pound. That will buy a nice brand new Kenworth or Peterbilt.


They go to feedlots in Kansas, where they come out at 1,100-400 pounds and worth just over $2 a pound on the hoof.

Then somebody kills every one, and they don’t ship them overseas.

Guess what?

In 2020, there were around 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States. A small number of these slaughterhouses process the majority of meat in the country.

Explanation

• A beef analyst estimated that a little more than 50 plants are responsible for up to 98% of slaughtering and processing in the United States.
  
  
• The number of slaughter facilities is increasing due to the demand for meat in the United States.
  
  
• The increase in meat production and slaughter facilities has led to an increase in harm to the health of wildlife and watersheds.
  
  
• Poultry slaughter has nearly doubled in recent decades as chicken consumption has increased.
  
  
• Approximately 25 million farmed animals are slaughtered every day in the United States.
  
  
• Per capita meat consumption in the United States is estimated at 222.4 pounds annually.

Xxxx
An estimated 38 percent of slaughterhouse workers were born outside of the U.S., and many are undocumented immigrants. This makes it much easier for employers to violate labor laws, usually at the workers’ expense. Earlier this year, a group of poultry processors were fined $5 million by the Department of Labor for committing a litany of worker abuses, including denial of overtime pay, falsification of payroll records, illegal child labor and retaliation against workers who’d cooperated with federal investigators.

Child labor is especially common in slaughterhouses, and it’s becoming more common: between 2015 and 2022, the number of minors illegally employed in slaughterhouses nearly quadrupled, according to data from the Department of Labor. Just last month, a DOJ investigation found children as young as 13 working at a slaughterhouse that provided meat to Tyson and Perdue.

Xxxx

Where do they hide them?

 

[anotherbob]

Black cows are high because the order buyers pay a premium for black angus.

Makes sense.

Henry lives across the road. My mother rented him ten idle acres in 2002 when he was sixteen, if he’d fix the fences.

Not a bad deal.

He fixed the fences, and built a barn on it, and put a new cover over the well.

Well well. That sounds productive.

Cows are high as ^%}* when you can buy the new truck that hauls them away for the check from the sale barn.

What kind of things do cows do to get high though?

Also, Henry believes, like I believe, that if he ever once—-just one time—-deceives somebody that right is wrong or wrong is right, that he’s committed the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost.

Not a bad trait to have.

And that he will forever burn in hell with no chance of salvation or reprieve.

In plain terms, that means Henry will die before he does evil.

Nice character trait to have in a renter of a farm, you know?

Nice trait to have in any noncriminal, for example he'd be a bad thief or hitman.

 

[LOREN]

Times sure have changed. My grandfather raised a few cattle but it was for meat for the household. He had long since stopped farming due to his age by the time I was old enough to remember him. He had a picture of a Hereford on a wall back in the part of the house we weren't supposed to go into. It had the look of a black and white photo that had been colorized. My mother told me that was his prized bull back in his early days of farming.

 

[Briar Lee]

Times sure have changed. My grandfather raised a few cattle but it was for meat for the household. He had long since stopped farming due to his age by the time I was old enough to remember him. He had a picture of a Hereford on a wall back in the part of the house we weren't supposed to go into. It had the look of a black and white photo that had been colorized. My mother told me that was his prized bull back in his early days of farming.

My mother said when my father drove her to visit his parents on our farm in the spring of 1947, fat red Herefords lined both sides of the road and everything was new, and freshly painted.

My father opened her door and took her up the concrete sidewalk to the rock column framed porch of his mother’s brand new house (actually over a decade old) and his mother came out to greet him.

She looked my mother up and down (she was 5’ 7” and the headline pretty girl singer at the 1946 Camdenton J-Bar-H rodeo) and said

Brucie, why would you want that skinny river rat when you can have Janice Tillery for the asking?.

My mother started crying, and my father got mad, and his father Briggs stepped out to save the situation,

He said Mama, please fix something for these kids to eat, and little Missy, I’ve something in that barn I’d like you to see.

My mother said he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and he led her into a huge red barn and to a stable where a beautiful bay mare was, and a brand new saddle.

He said no daughter of mine goes without a good horse and saddle around here.

Brucie, why don’t you take her to Spout Spring Hollow, and introduce her to your cousins.

As she lay dying a lifetime later, sometimes she’d confuse me for my father.

She’d say your father gave me, a fine horse and and new saddle, and Wanda, Helene, and Dixie made me feel like a princess.

Henry build his bride a brand new home across the road to the entrance to Spout Spring Hollow, where a century ago my father and his three cherished cousins played in Spout Spring Hollow, until supper time.

You see, if I’m not a good man, it’s impossible to blame my upbringing for it.

Nathaniel and Leonard will all in good time, take their brides there to meet Mama.

That’s why I root for Henry.

I’m glad he has almost a half million dollar herd, of fancy fat black cattle.

When my mother went to the nursing home 15 years ago he owned 9 mama cows and they weren’t fancy.

 

[anotherbob]

Times sure have changed. My grandfather raised a few cattle but it was for meat for the household. He had long since stopped farming due to his age by the time I was old enough to remember him. He had a picture of a Hereford on a wall back in the part of the house we weren't supposed to go into. It had the look of a black and white photo that had been colorized. My mother told me that was his prized bull back in his early days of farming.

I've known a few people who've done that. Also know a local farm that "leases" cattle. You pay them to take care of one of their cows and you get the meat when they slaughter it. It's expensive but insanely cheap when you compare it to if you bought all the meat off of one.
There is a lot of meat on one of those animals.
Fun fact for how times have changed. In certain places in the middle ages that was the poor person option.

 

[warren]

I buy my beef from a "boutique" ranch. I can buy only the cuts I desire and request a special cut now and then, no packaged deals with cuts I wouldn't want included. Reasonable prices as far as I'm concerned for quality beef. Will, the prices increase? Certainly but, they probably won't reach a level that prices me out of their market.

 

[Briar Lee]

I buy my beef from a "boutique" ranch. I can buy only the cuts I desire and request a special cut now and then, no packaged deals with cuts I wouldn't want included. Reasonable prices as far as I'm concerned for quality beef. Will, the prices increase? Certainly but, they probably won't reach a level that prices me out of their market.

Good Christian mothers in my childhood would freely allow the fathers of their children to take them out, under one condition.

If her child died under his care, she would kill him when he came home without the child.

Serious.

At the Humansville locker plant, when Daddy took in a hog to butcher, whenever they took out the .22 to kill the hog, my Daddy was sure to put me in the other room, so there would be zero chance a stray bullet would find me.

Daddy tried one time breeding a Jersey with a Hereford bull, and butchering the calf.

Our dogs had to get really hungry before they’d eat a dead HALF dairy cow.

To this day, there are little locker plants because of a wise regulation the farmer can sell a cow, hog, or lamb, but those little locker plants cannot sell meat.

So let’s go back to Henry’s problems.

At $340 a hundred he can use the Amish Communty phone that’s out on a pole halfway between the first crossing of Turkey Creek to the Plum Grove Christian Church (so they don’t use the phone so much) to call a trucker and that 600 pounder brings Henry $2,040.

Or Henry can buy enough corn ground up to feed that two thousand forty dollar calf to 1,400 pounds.

800 pounds of gain requires a hundred bushels of $5 corn, or $500.

The feedlot price of a 1400 pound steer is about $2,800.

Henry can make an extra $260 selling fed cattle to the English.


The locker plant can charge the English 90 cents a pound ($740) and box him up 840 pounds of beef.

By this time the English has written a $2,800 check to Henry and another $740 check to the locker plant and he drives home, and says Mama look, I have 840 pounds of beef and it only cost $4.21 a pound!

He’d better not try that, none too often.

Better get Mama’s approval to buy 840 pounds at once!

Sing one, Johnny Russell!

 

[wyfbane]

Henry could load up 50,000 pounds of 5-600 pound calves and put them on a truck and he’d get a check for about $170,000, or 3.40 a pound. That will buy a nice brand new Kenworth or Peterbilt.


They go to feedlots in Kansas, where they come out at 1,100-400 pounds and worth just over $2 a pound on the hoof.

Then somebody kills every one, and they don’t ship them overseas.

Guess what?

In 2020, there were around 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States. A small number of these slaughterhouses process the majority of meat in the country.

Explanation

• A beef analyst estimated that a little more than 50 plants are responsible for up to 98% of slaughtering and processing in the United States.
  
  
• The number of slaughter facilities is increasing due to the demand for meat in the United States.
  
  
• The increase in meat production and slaughter facilities has led to an increase in harm to the health of wildlife and watersheds.
  
  
• Poultry slaughter has nearly doubled in recent decades as chicken consumption has increased.
  
  
• Approximately 25 million farmed animals are slaughtered every day in the United States.
  
  
• Per capita meat consumption in the United States is estimated at 222.4 pounds annually.

Xxxx
An estimated 38 percent of slaughterhouse workers were born outside of the U.S., and many are undocumented immigrants. This makes it much easier for employers to violate labor laws, usually at the workers’ expense. Earlier this year, a group of poultry processors were fined $5 million by the Department of Labor for committing a litany of worker abuses, including denial of overtime pay, falsification of payroll records, illegal child labor and retaliation against workers who’d cooperated with federal investigators.

Child labor is especially common in slaughterhouses, and it’s becoming more common: between 2015 and 2022, the number of minors illegally employed in slaughterhouses nearly quadrupled, according to data from the Department of Labor. Just last month, a DOJ investigation found children as young as 13 working at a slaughterhouse that provided meat to Tyson and Perdue.

Xxxx

Where do they hide them?

I feel honored. I have now been the target of a Briar Lee ramble. Nothing you wrote directly impacts what I wrote, but it was interesting reading. It prompted me to actually push past my snark and look into beef prices.

It has to do with farmer confidence and operating costs. As productions costs have gone up (feed costs affected by drought, fuel costs, and inflation) so have costs. This resulted in lack of confidence on the part of many ranchers, who have sold off larger portions of their herds (including breeding age heifers) to make some $$.

As shitty as beef prices are, the numbers of cattle in feedlots is good enough to maintain the shitty prices. The problem is, herds are at 1951 levels and there does not exist enough breeding stock to maintain the current numbers, let alone expand to meet demands and lower costs.

Even if our economy unfucks itself tomorrow (impossible) and farmers get all warm and fuzzy (equally impossible in my experience, lol), it will take years to rebuild herd levels to where we consumers will be happy with the supply. It takes around 18 months to 2 years to get a calf from birth to burger, so years.

I'm betting foreign interests have been keenly watching this and are excited to export beef to us in to fill the gaps.

The only thing that scares me more than foreign dependence on defense equipment is foreign dependence on my ribeyes. And let's not forget there is an active movement here to link beef to environmental issues and a general war being waged on meat in general.

 

[warren]

I'm betting foreign interests have been keenly watching this and are excited to export beef to us in to fill the gaps.

O
I'd love access to some good Irish beef, fill of grass flavor. And, not finished in a feed lot. But, we Americans want our beef cheap, young and without much flavor. And the farmers can't afford to grow 'em age four or five. For those old enough to remember full flavored, grass finished beef, it's sad indeed. It's damned hard to find beef that tastes like beef in the stores.

 

[wyfbane]

O
I'd love access to some good Irish beef, fill of grass flavor. And, not finished in a feed lot. But, we Americans want our beef cheap, young and without much flavor. And the farmers can't afford to grow 'em age four or five. For those old enough to remember full flavored, grass finished beef, it's sad indeed.

I agree. However, production costs on a cow that double cycles (4 years from birth to burger) would be through the roof now, though delicious.

I was thinking more South American interests, that can keep chopping down rain forests and increasing their supply of cheap, young beef.

 

[Richmond B. Funkenhouser]

O
I'd love access to some good Irish beef, fill of grass flavor. And, not finished in a feed lot. But, we Americans want our beef cheap, young and without much flavor. And the farmers can't afford to grow 'em age four or five. For those old enough to remember full flavored, grass finished beef, it's sad indeed. It's damned hard to find beef that tastes like beef in the stores.

I bought some of the good stuff from a local guy a while back... At first the taste was so strong that I wasn't even sure If I liked it.

By my third steak my palate had adjusted and the increase in quality was easy to see.

I bet that if grocery stores started selling the good stuff people would turn their noses up, at first.

 

[warren]

I bet that if grocery stores started selling the good stuff people would turn their noses up, at first.

Most likely true!

I know it's just a waste of time to wish for what we can't have. But. good beef is hard to find. We, customers in general, have been trained to look at price far more than quality. Which is not unreasonable for those on a tight budget and stores gotta cater to the customer. But, damnitalltohell, I can't even get tasty beef at my local butcher shop. I'll pay the asking price, just make it available somewhere I can get to.

Life's a bitch and then we die. 'nuff said!

 

[Briar Lee]

I feel honored. I have now been the target of a Briar Lee ramble. Nothing you wrote directly impacts what I wrote, but it was interesting reading. It prompted me to actually push past my snark and look into beef prices.

It has to do with farmer confidence and operating costs. As productions costs have gone up (feed costs affected by drought, fuel costs, and inflation) so have costs. This resulted in lack of confidence on the part of many ranchers, who have sold off larger portions of their herds (including breeding age heifers) to make some $$.

As shitty as beef prices are, the numbers of cattle in feedlots is good enough to maintain the shitty prices. The problem is, herds are at 1951 levels and there does not exist enough breeding stock to maintain the current numbers, let alone expand to meet demands and lower costs.

Even if our economy unfucks itself tomorrow (impossible) and farmers get all warm and fuzzy (equally impossible in my experience, lol), it will take years to rebuild herd levels to where we consumers will be happy with the supply. It takes around 18 months to 2 years to get a calf from birth to burger, so years.

I'm betting foreign interests have been keenly watching this and are excited to export beef to us in to fill the gaps.

The only thing that scares me more than foreign dependence on defense equipment is foreign dependence on my ribeyes. And let's not forget there is an active movement here to link beef to environmental issues and a general war being waged on meat in general.

The Amish (and our church too) got automatic conscientious objector status during World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam.

The difference is our boys didn’t use it.

Christian Church boys love Uncle Sam almost as much as we love our mothers.

And by Uncle Sam, we mean everybody from the prisoner in the darkest isolation cell to the good Christian boy that always safeguards the nuclear football with his life.

I grew up in a home, in a church, and in a school where I had to find the best answer, for myself.

Henry can’t read newspapers, he can’t watch television, he can’t use Google, but he can and he does, religiously, chase a dollar bill.

He doesn’t celebrate any holidays, can’t have a flag, won’t pose for a photograph, won’t vote, and will never drink one drop of liquor.

Henry and his family are all millionaires, because they get advice from the Bolivar office of the Farm Services Agency.

https://www.fsa.usda.gov/

Which works with the agriculture department of the University of Missouri.

MU Extension in Polk County | MU Extension

extension.missouri.edu

Henry will never take one penny of taxpayer money, but he’ll use the fruits of public education to help better his and his family’s life.

Henry isn’t superstitious, not any at all.

He’ll walk through the Plum Grove cemetery at midnight and not fear any haunts, goblins, or spooks.

He’s as brave, as Colin Kelly II.

Colin Kelly - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

In this wonderful land of freedom there will be two thousand dollar feeder calves so long as the market will bear it.

To phrase it different, two thousand dollar feeder calves are one of them there wonderful first world problems.

 

[Briar Lee]

O
I'd love access to some good Irish beef, fill of grass flavor. And, not finished in a feed lot. But, we Americans want our beef cheap, young and without much flavor. And the farmers can't afford to grow 'em age four or five. For those old enough to remember full flavored, grass finished beef, it's sad indeed. It's damned hard to find beef that tastes like beef in the stores.

My wife and I drove out to someplace in Kansas a few years ago, to buy a hundred dollars worth of chickens, and I fell asleep in the passenger seat and woke up and she was running 90 miles an hour past the Bazaar Cattle Pens.

Bazaar Cattle Pens - Bazaar KS, 66846

Check out the scenic overlook that allows travelers an opportunity to pull over and get a better view of the Flint Hills. Visitors can see not only the cattle grazing in the summer, but also a herd of antelope that was re-established in the area, plus a variety of plants and animals like coyotes...

www.travelks.com

I said oh please let’s stop on the way back!

(My folks talked about Bazaar Kansas and wished our farm was as clean and nice)

I looked around and the Flint Hills are just like the surface of the moon, if the moon had prairie grass.

When Henry loads out a feeder calf, it might be backgrounded in the Flint Hills.

Xxxx

Backgrounding cattle in the Flint Hills of Kansas involves grazing yearling cattle in the spring and early fall. The practice is known for high-quality forage and weight gain.

How it works

• Stocking: In the spring, yearling cattle are trucked into the Flint Hills.
  
  
• Grazing: The cattle graze in recently burned pastures.
  
  
• Unloading: Cattle are unloaded from trucks one at a time into holding pens.
  
  
• Moving: Cattle are moved to pastures where they graze and fatten.
  
  
• Shipping: In July, cattle are shipped off.
  
  
• Resting: The land is rested until the following spring.

Xxxx

We got our chickens and I took a lot of photos and then we headed back towards Missouri and she promised me we’d stop the next time, we passed Bazaar. Her back was hurting. By Kansas City she couldn’t drive anymore.

Not much to see there anyway, unless they were moving cattle.

Walmart sells all the grass fed beef you’d like to pay for.



My wife never buys it.

I didn’t escape Bug Tussle, to eat grass fed beef.

Back in 1973 when cows were high, they tried making grass fed grade USDA Prime and it just didn’t work.

USDA Prime, Choice and Select: Why the USDA Seal Really Matters – What's at Steak

blog.kansascitysteaks.com

Corn finshed beef is marbled.

Which is another way to say there’s tasty fat mixed in with the muscle.

Americans say they want lean beef and they expect a Golden Ox good steak.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b89550af2e6b1c28361c3f3/t/64d577c97b4a0a5461987753/1691711433774/Golden+Ox+11+x+17+Dinner+Menu+08.09.2023.pdf

Can’t have both.