November turkey demand provides a brief respite to seasonally increasing beef values, normally peaking in early December after a final post-Thanksgiving surge.
Herd rebuilding now has packer harvest capacity nearly maxed out and, with more quality cattle in the mix, we۪ve seen the largest weekly supplies of CAB carcasses on record.
There’s no question that carcass weights were significantly lower in January than they would have been given a more typical weather pattern for the month.
Data for the final week of August is yet to be posted but it’s a formality at this juncture, given the pace of CAB-qualifying carcasses in the first 3 ½ weeks.
The two weeks in the middle of the month marked by extreme weather and insufficient fed cattle to harvest-space put a cap on cattle prices as packers found themselves well-supplied.
