Cattle prices stampede to all-time high

Prices for feeder cattle zoomed to all-time highs in McCook Monday, with order buyers paying $118 a hundredweight for feeders averaging 888 pounds and $119 for a group with average weights of 741 pounds.

"I expected a runaway, but I didn't expect a stampede." That was the reaction of Erv Reiser of Columbus, a long-time cattle buyer who paid $118 a hundred at Tri-State Livestock Commission Co. for 190 black steers brought to market by Gene Bortner and sons Bill and Ben from northeast of McCook. Top prices of $119 a hundred were paid for feeders marketed by Danny Berndt of Danbury.

"This is unreal," said Jack Lytle of McCook, a veteran sale barn observer.

The feeder prices -- up to $1.21 for lesser weights -- are at all-time highs, exceeding even the peaks reached before the BSE scare in December.

Right after the Bovine Spongiform report, prices in the U.S. fell to $75 a hundredweight. But there has been a steady climb in prices since then, spiraling to the high reached Monday.

The market could go even higher. The two main factors are the drought, which has drastically cut the size of cowherds in the northern and western United States, and the Atkins Diet, which has inspired great demand for the protein power of beef products.

Reiser, who has been in the cattle business for 45 years, said he has never seen anything like the current price surge. "We're several million cows short of the peak. When you combine that with the closing of the Canadian border (to beef imports), the result is record prices," he said.

The soaring prices for beef are especially impressive when you consider that the prices are being achieved without key foreign markets, including Japan and Mexico. That's because those nations closed their borders to American beef after the report of a single case of BSE in the U.S., from a cow imported from Canada.

There have been no other BSE reports, before or since, in the U.S., and the American consumers continue to eat beef at a record pace.

All sources contacted -- Gayle Ruggles of Tri-State, Ryan Rogers of Midwest Livestock Commission and Cal Siegfried of Heartland Feeders -- see the high prices continuing as long as something unforeseen doesn't happen. Because, from bitter experience, the cattle industry has found how devastating a world crisis, such as the 9-11 attacks, can be.

But, if conditions remain stable and there are no major disease scares, the prices for cattle are expected to remain at high levels. As one of America's prime cattle feeding areas, that is especially good news for the Golden Plains of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.