Drought is pushing cattle out of pastures and into feed yards earlier than normal

Nebraska’s ongoing drought could change feeding plans for some farmers and ranchers this year.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Nebraska saw more cattle on feed last month compared to May 2024. The state saw a 2% increase in cattle in feedlots, while the U.S. saw an overall 2% decrease.

Several beef industry experts speculate the small bump could be due to several reasons, such as new Nebraska cattle feeding facilities coming online and some farmers choosing to keep their cattle on feed for longer. But drought is probably the leading reason as to why more cattle were at Nebraska’s feed yards last month.

University of Nebraska extension educator and BeefWatch podcast host Aaron Berger said several ranchers he works with chose to send their cattle to feedlots earlier this year because of drought’s continuing grip on parts of Nebraska’s cattle-grazing areas. Berger said some ranchers are choosing this year to send their youngest cattle straight to feedlots instead of grazing them in pastureland during the spring and summer, which ranchers typically prefer.

“Those are cattle that can fairly easily be moved to a feed yard to go on feed for harvest,” Berger said. “If there’s a shortage of grass, oftentimes those are the first cattle that are removed from range and pasture, because they’re the easiest group to do that with.”

The National Drought Mitigation Center’s most recent drought maps have shown recent improvement in parts of Nebraska that were extremely dry earlier this year. The National Integrated Drought Information System expects Nebraska to remain drier-than-normal through June.

Nebraska’s neighboring states of Iowa and Colorado also saw a slight increase in the number of cattle on feed. Berger wondered if the increases are due in part to Texas’ drop in cattle going into feedlots, otherwise known as feeder cattle. The U.S. closed its border to Mexican cattle imports due to new cases of screwworm in Southern Mexico. The drop could also reflect the proximity of feed, especially when drought can lessen availability.

“Because of the drought, feed is less available and more expensive in some of those areas,” Berger said. “I think there's a situation where we see greater cattle numbers continuing to be fed in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa – places that are closer to corn.”

Jeff Stolle of the Nebraska Cattlemen said drought could be a factor in Nebraska’s increase in the newest USDA report, but looking at cattle-on-feed reports over the next few months will give a clearer picture.

“If you have a very active couple of months of placement, sometimes that happens due to drought conditions,” Stolle said. “That can increase cattle-on-feed numbers at any given time, and then the inverse of that can be true as well. If you have really good pasture and range conditions and plentiful feed, that can slow down placements into feed yards, and that can affect cattle on feed numbers on any given month.”

Beef supply remains tight

Though Nebraska’s number of cattle being fed right now is higher, the cattle market is still strained when it comes to supply. Cattle herd numbers have continued to decrease in recent years. And while more cattle are being slaughtered at heavier weights, the number of cattle in the U.S. remains at record lows. Seeing more cattle in feed yards at this time of year doesn’t mean more cattle and lower beef prices. In fact, the price of a pound of ground beef jumped to a new high of $5.80 in April, which broke the record set in September, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“The inventories, quite honestly, are not enough to fill the infrastructure, neither at the cattle-feeding level or at the packing level,” Stolle said. “Hopefully we will see a rebuilding of beef cow numbers moving forward. I think that market actions over the last few months tend to indicate to me that we are probably starting into somewhat of an expansion phase.”

Expanding Nebraska’s and the country’s herds may eventually reset beef prices, but given the slow-moving process of raising and slaughtering cattle, it may be a few years before the beef supply improves. Until then, Nebraska could continue to see record-setting cattle prices, where an April cattle sale in North Platte drew in some of the highest feeder cattle prices ever recorded in the U.S. Stolle and Berger agreed that both cattle and beef prices will remain elevated for the foreseeable future.

“We have never – and ‘never’ is not a word that I use very often, but in this case it’s accurate – we have never sold fed cattle for as high prices as we’ve sold them [last] week,” Stolle said. “And they’re likely to stay that way for a while, because to change that overall supply picture in a substantive way… we’re a couple years from seeing that happen.”