Feeder cattle

Backgrounding cattle that achieve weights of 650–700 pounds (290–320 kg) are suitable for sale to grass feeding operations, whereas those achieving weights of 800–825 pounds (363–374 kg) are suitable for sale to feedlot operators.

[4] Buyers of feeder cattle tend to look for high average gain (in weight) and low feed-to-gain ratio.

[6][4] The United States grades feeder cattle that have not reached an age of 36 months on three factors: frame size, thickness, and thriftiness.

Feeder cattle with other obvious physical indicators that would imply sickness are heavily discounted.

Discounts on sick feeder cattle compensate for their increased risk of death, and lower performance in weight gain even if they recover.

These programs may include weaning 21 to 45 days before sale, vaccinating for respiratory and digestive diseases, de-horning, castrating, implanting growth implants, treating for external and internal parasites, and starting to switch the feeder cattle to grain-based feed.

The Index inputs are seven-day feeder cattle auction, direct trade, video sale, and Internet sale transaction prices for qualified steers publicly reported from the following twelve feeder cattle producing states: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming.

Additionally, qualifying steers must not exhibit predominantly dairy, exotic, or Brahman breed characteristics, and must not have an origin outside of the US.

[13] The CME Feeder Cattle Index is calculated using prices reported by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).

Its weighting in S&P GSCI give feeder cattle futures prices non-trivial influence on returns on a wide range of investment funds and portfolios.

[18] Conversely, traders and investors have become non-trivial participants in the market for feeder cattle futures.

These commodities share many fundamental demand and supply risks, such long feeding periods, weather, feed prices, and consumer sentiment, which makes grouping them together useful for commercial discussions about both the commodities and their futures contracts.

Depending on the operation, producers purchase corn, soybean meal, and other commodities as feed.

[3] In addition to exchange-traded products, cattle producers can purchase livestock gross margin insurance policy contracts (LGM-Cattle) sponsored by the USDA Risk Management Agency from authorized crop insurance agents.

Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition (PDF).