– Dr. Kenny Burdine, Extension Professor, Livestock Marketing, University of Kentucky
There has been much discussion about beef cow slaughter this year. Dry weather, rising input costs, and strong cull cow prices are resulting in large numbers of beef cows leaving cow-calf operations and moving into the beef system. It has actually been somewhat surprising that cull cow prices have remained as high as they have given beef cow slaughter levels. Certainly, some of this strength in prices is due to strong demand, but dairy cow slaughter is an often overlooked component of cow slaughter and I wanted to discuss that in a bit more detail this week.
As of January 1, 2022, the USDA estimated there were a bit over 30 million beef cows, and just under 9.4 million dairy cows, in the US. While inventories of both fluctuate though the years, it is very common for there to be 3 to 3.5 times as many beef cows in the US as there are dairy cows. However, because the dairy cow herd gets culled more harder than the beef herd, dairy cow slaughter typically accounts for around 50% of all cow slaughter. One way to illustrate this would be to consider Continue reading