Published September 16, 2026
This page reads the same USDA reports the sale barns read, and it refreshes every day. If the numbers below are climbing, the cattle standing in your lot are worth more this week than they were last week.
Fed cattle — finished steers and heifers going to the packer — set the tone for everything else. When the packer pays more for finished cattle, feedyards can pay more for feeders, and feeder demand walks straight back to the cow-calf producer.
Look at the direction, not just the number. A live price that has moved up two or three weeks running usually means the packer is short on cattle, and that is the window where a seller has leverage.
Cull cow and bull prices move on a different clock than feeders. They firm up when grinding beef demand is strong and slide in the fall when everybody ships open cows at once.
If you are culling, the worst week of the year is usually the same week your neighbors cull. Shipping a few weeks early or late is often worth more than any sorting you can do at the chute.
The boxed beef cutout is what the packer gets for the meat. When the cutout is strong and cattle supplies are tight, packers bid up. When the cutout falls and they already have cattle bought ahead, bids soften fast.
You do not need to trade the cutout. You just need to know whether the buyer sitting across from you is having a good month or a bad one.
Weigh your cattle, or estimate honestly. Price is quoted per hundredweight, so a 40-pound error on a group of twenty head is real money.
Run your group through the value calculator, then price your listing a little under what the calculator says if you want it gone this month, or right at it if you can wait.
Post the weight, the age, the breed and the vaccination history in the listing. Buyers pay more for cattle they do not have to guess about.
A simple way to land on a number buyers take seriously — using weight, class and today's market instead of what the neighbor says.
Six photos, taken in ten minutes with the phone in your pocket, that make the difference between a sale and a scroll-past.
Which one actually nets more, and how to tell which side of the line your machine falls on.
Prices come from public USDA market reports and are shown for reference only. Actual sale prices vary by lot, location and day.