A excellent pal of mine from the great state of Alabama asked me a question this past fall that even now bears asking today. We were standing around one afternoon waiting on a sale to begin—fixing all the world’s complications that’s when a lot of the world’s troubles are fixed right?

He proceeded to ask me the query, given the opportunity, where would you rather invest in nowadays’s livestock market in cattle or in gold? If you examine the charts for the past twelve months, they both look very exciting . They have both rose higher. As of Tuesday, March 29th, April Gold closed at $1417.90, where April Live cattle closed at $119.65, which values a 1,250 lb. steer at $ 1,495.63.  So what would you select? Well, I don’t know about you but I’m pretty bullish on the cattle markets these days! There are just so many reasons to be excited and very few causes not to be. First of all, cattle numbers are said to be down to levels seen back in the 50’s some even clame the 30’s. Andif one could get out much these days, it doesn’t take a lot to convince you of this fact. The local runs at the auction markets are not high. rates for slaughter cows and bulls haven’t been higher than in recent months, which has led to a sell off of cattle that are not pulling their own weight around the farm. If a cow messes up now a days and comes up open, she gets shipped inside of a blink of an eye. Secondly, in addition to prices on slaughter cows and bulls, feeder cattle and live cattle are trading at high levels. Who would have thought we would see the day when a fat steer could dollar out at 1500 dollars? It’s nothing short of incredible! Furthermore, April Feeder cattle closed on March 29th at $136.43. We are now viewing weaned calves sell at over $800 per head! Replacement bulls and females are at high levels as well. Many of our spring bull sales are seeing averages ranging in the upper three thousand to the low four thousand range with top commercial replacement pairs Busting the 2k dollar mark. Some would say that a cow could be worth 2  times the value of a calf. If that is real, then a young replacement pair will soon average $2000! No matter what segment of the business you are in cow, calf, stocker, feeder or seedstock producer there are plenty of reasons for you to be encouraged. So, what are the causes to not be excited? Better yet, what lies ahead that might mess up our current blissful conditions? First of all, a prolonged drought would be painful. A partial reason for our low cattle numbers is due to rain of 2009. And while we are currently encountering dry weather, we aren’t yet into those conditions again. If you are a current subscriber, then you are familiar with meteorologist Brian Bledsoe, who supplies us with a monthly column and has done a very good job in the field of long term forecasting. Last Wednesday, he dropped me an email just to give me an update on his forecast. The subject line on the email reads “La Nina Rapidly Weakening”. According to Brian, it is doing so at a record pace. Why? I encourage you to not miss Brian’s next column in the April 15th issue. He can explain the reasons considerably better than I. But Brian is encouraged that we may see the end to current dry conditions in late spring or early summer. Another reason for pessimism is the current political environment. There are times when politics spill over into our markets causing non permanent or prolonged problems. Is this one of those times? I really couldn’t say. But, with the current unrest in the Middle East and a very anemic economy it bears watching closely. A third reason to be wary about our future would be high input costs. Let’s face it. It costs more to feed them these days. It also costs more to fertilize, vaccinate and ship them not to mention the rising costs of vehicles, trailers, balers and more. I see these problems, yet I remain inspired about our future because I feel we are seeing new plateaus set for our rates. The days of low cost food may very well be behind us. Consumers are paying more for beef, yet the demand increases. If you are a seedstock producer, the desire for bulls and quality replacement females has never been greater and they are both in very short supply! If you a cow operator, you should be encouraged because our numbers are so low, it should take years to rebuild to former levels. For me, I’ll take the livestock business I can’t eat gold! SLS

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