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‘A great year for ranchers’

As the market cools, 2014 was good for Southwest Colorado

Cattle prices appear to be coming off of a record high in 2014, but that still doesn’t put a damper on a profitable year for many ranchers in Southwest Colorado.

“It’s been a great year for ranchers,” Cortez Livestock Auction auctioneer Rowdy Suckla said at the final sale barn of the year Dec. 17. “Cattle has been in a crash the last two weeks, along with oil prices, but every market has to have a correction.”

According to recent analyst reports, cattle on a national scale traded roughly $4 lower on a live basis last week compared with the week before.

“It appears the industry may find it difficult to push feeder cattle prices back to record levels in the near term, but it also seems unlikely that feeder cattle futures will continue declining at such a rapid pace,” University of Tennessee agriculture analyst Andrew Griffith wrote in a Dec. 18 market report.

Suckla said locally, steer prices have averaged about $240 and heifers about $230, compared with peak prices of $260 earlier this year.

“The market may not get as high (as it has been in 2014), but I think it will steady off by the first of the year,” Suckla said.

“I think they (ranchers) should use their money wisely, just in case the market does fall again,” he said.



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