Steer Prices are Down
Jeff If there were questions about whether or not the oil bust would play a role in a drop in steer prices, I think the numbers below answer that in the affirmative.
This is basically a “same store sales” type of comparison between the first quarter of 2015 and 2016 online steer sale seasons.
The only steers that are included in these numbers are steers that sold in online sales between January and March from operations that sold cattle in online sales in both 2015 and 2016.
There were 571 steers that sold in 49 sales by those 36 operations in 2015.
There were 593 steers that sold in 47 sales by those 36 operations in 2016.
I did that instead of the entire data set in order to do a more apples to apples comparison. The numbers aren't down quite as much when you include the rest of the steers that have sold online, but they were still down.
| Percentile | 2015 | 2016 |
| 95th | 11,000 | 10,000 |
| 90th | 9,250 | 7,250 |
| 80th | 6,000 | 5,310 |
| 70th | 4,750 | 4,304 |
| 60th | 3,990 | 3,500 |
| 50th | 3,500 | 3,001 |
| 40th | 3,000 | 2,750 |
| 30th | 2,600 | 2,400 |
| 20th | 2,251 | 2,000 |
| 10th | 2,000 | 1,800 |
| Aggregate | ||
| Count | 571 | 593 |
| Average | 4,669 | 4,173 |
The data set includes the $53,000 MAB sired roan steer that increases the 2016 average sale price by about $80.
Outside of that one calf, the prices for steers sold in those sales is down from top to bottom.
The overall average was down by 11.5%.
The net difference in gross sales for those 36 operations was $294,128, about $8,000 per operation/partnership.
There were 48 steers that sold for $10k or more in those sales in 2015 (8.4%) but only 30 in 2016 (5%).