The cash cattle price went dark. USDA found a flashlight.

Welcome to the first Red Dirt Report. Every other Monday you'll get one straight take on the cattle, dairy and ag lending news worth your attention, one tool worth your time, and one laugh. Let's get to it.

The Take

USDA's new five-state cash cattle report is a good fix for the report. It isn't a fix for the market.

If you sell fed cattle in Oklahoma or Texas, you haven't been able to look up a regional cash price since early July. USDA hasn't hidden it on purpose. There just haven't been enough negotiated trades to publish one.

Here's how that happens. USDA's Livestock Mandatory Reporting system has confidentiality rules that keep any single feedyard or packer from being identified in a report. When too few trades happen in a region, the report goes blank. The Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico report has been withheld every week since early July. Kansas went dark in late August. Colorado has been withheld since late 2022.

On Monday, October 26, USDA started combining those five states into one aggregated regional cash report. Same data packers already submit, just pooled across a bigger area so there are enough trades to print a number. Mississippi State economist Josh Maples put it plainly: “This is a reporting change, not a market change.”

He's right, and the real story is underneath it. Negotiated cash trade was about half of fed cattle sales in 2005. In 2025 it was under 18 percent. Most cattle now sell on formulas and grids, and many of those formulas are priced off the cash trade. So a shrinking group of cash deals sets the price for everybody else. Pooling five states makes that thin trade visible. It doesn't make it any deeper.

And a five-state average can be accurate and still not be your price. Freight, cattle quality, which plant is buying and local competition all differ between the Panhandle and western Kansas. A pooled number is a reference point, not an appraisal of your pen.

What we'd do with this

• Feeders: Know your own number. Track your closeouts and your grid results pen by pen. When the public price is thin, your own records are the best evidence of what your cattle are worth and where the premiums are coming from.
• Cow-calf and stocker operators: Expect more of your price to come from how your cattle perform, not from a regional average. Calves with documented genetics, health and weights have something to point to when the public number is fuzzy.
• Lenders: Don't value collateral off one pooled average. Ask borrowers for their own sale and closeout history, and weigh it alongside the public reports. A borrower who can show you their numbers is a better credit than one who can't.

Price transparency used to come from the report. More and more, it comes from your own records.

Worth Your Time

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From the Sale Barn

Overheard at the coffee table: “They had to combine five states to get one price. My wife and I can't agree on one restaurant.”

Your Turn

If you buy, sell or lend on fed cattle: where are you getting your price now that the regional reports went quiet? Tell us in the comments on LinkedIn.

Red Dirt Growth Advisors helps cattle and dairy operations, ag lenders and agtech companies make better decisions with their data. We're based in Washington, Oklahoma. Subscribe so the next edition lands in your inbox.

Sources

• USDA Pools Five Feeding States to Break Fed Cattle Data Blackout (Drovers)
• As Cash Trade Shrinks, USDA Expands Regional Cattle Market Reporting (DTN/Progressive Farmer, Oct. 23, 2026)
• USDA to add regional cash cattle price report from October 26 (The Cattle Site)
• USDA adds regional cash cattle report to improve price transparency (The Provisioner)
• USDA Updates Cash Cattle Reports to Improve Market Transparency (WWBL)