With deep culling, daily cattle slaughter has continued to run in the 127,000 to 129,000 range and for the year slaughter is up about 1.5% over 2021. Some of its the increased cow slaughter.

That fire sale pushed U.S. cattle slaughter up a whopping 13% over 2021 and dropped this year’s cattle inventory to 89 million head, or nearly 3 million less than 2022.

Female slaughter levels have tipped over the long-term average as cattle producers react to falling prices and talk of El Nino. Read the Paper Tributes.