I hope that you have read the "Apoplexy" post over at Barnhardt.biz.  This post will reference that.  The phrase that keeps coming back to my mind is " . . . if they (feedlots) haven’t been losing another $100-$200/head, I think they’ll be a little freer with the bid.”

FREER WITH THE BID.  FREER WITH THE BID.  It seems to me that freeness with the bid is at monumentally catastrophic levels.  And feedlots need to be "FREER"?  Here's the math:

Last week:

SELL 1350# fat steers @ $83.00

BUY 714# steers @ $108.57 (This is per the USDA Nebraska weekly average composite report)

Return on the gain = $0.54 per pound

Let's call all-inclusive gain costs $0.80 right now.  ALL-INCLUSIVE.

This means that feedlots bought these cattle at a $165 per head loss.  And analysts think that this doesn't constitute "freeness with the bid"?  What exactly are we looking for?  A $200 per head loss?  A $250 per head loss?  A $300 per head loss?

Stocker and Cow/Calf guys, listen up.  This feedyard deal has everything in the world to do with you.  If your customer base, which is feedyards, all go broke and the cattle feeding industry moves into South America . . . where EXACTLY does that leave you? 

Stocker, cow/calf, finishers - we must ALL root for the financial success and well-being of our CUSTOMER.  Our existence depends on him - whoever he may be.  I'm not sure what you can do directly, except to tell him that his losses are HIS fault and that there is a solution - and a relatively simple one.  And, no, the "solution" is NOT speculating in the futures markets, which is what a lot of the more thoroughly incompetent feedyards do.

The worst thing we can do is allow someone to persist in ignorance.  Nodding and sympathetically agreeing while an incompetent cattleman bemoans these "horrible markets" is an intrinsically HATEFUL, COWARDLY response.  Speak up.  Speak the truth.  Don't worry so much about being "nice" and "everyone's friend".  Worry about helping yourself, and then helping your neighbor.  If you came across a man who had slipped, fallen, and was lying in a huge mud puddle, would you stand over him and commiserate with him about how terrible his situation was, and how filthy the mud was?  No!  If you cared - even on a very general, non-intimate level - you would reach out your hand and offer to help him up out of the mud.  If he refused your help and continued to bemoan how filthy the mud was, you would become stern and snap at him, "Come on!  Get out of that mud!"

This is how it is with us in the cattle business.  We have to be bold.  We have to fight, not just for ourselves, but for one another.

Before you go, please check out my lovely new tower ad for Bud Williams Marketing to your right.  Thanks to Kaitlin Spidle for her great graphic design.  If you are in KRVN country, you will also begin hearing radio ads for BWM starting Sunday.