America’s cattle crisis: A shrinking herd, soaring beef prices, and little relief in sight

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It’s late morning in Central Texas Hill Country, and a Black Baldy is prodded into a small auditorium of Western hats and dusty ball caps. Her dark coat and stark white face is typical of this cow breed known for easy calving and attentive mothering.

“It’s going to go as a packer animal," says Tim Niedecken, who works for the Jordan Cattle Auction. He means that the cow will be sold by the pound for slaughter. Perhaps she no longer breeds well.

More likely, the high price of beef is too tempting. “Dollar bill, dollar bill," hollers the auctioneer. A staccato blur of two-cent increments follows as fast as tractor pistons firing under load.

Buyers sit motionless but for a few flickering hands, and 21 seconds later, the price is set at $1.30 a pound. It’s half what finer cattle sell for, but double what similar cows fetched five years ago. Now the weight.

The Jordan company, with its Thursday auction here in San Saba and on Mondays an hour away in Mason, is one of the biggest cattle sellers in the biggest cattle state. Its bidders, who supply McDonald’s and Wendy’s as well as posh steakhouses, like weigh-ups, where their experienced eyes must guess what the scale will say. Jordan will sell perhaps 1,100 head of cattle today for over $2 million.

This cow comes in at 940 pounds, or $1,222. Outside, nine mounted cowboys whistle and yip, moving pens of mooing cattle into position for sale. But not pen 508.

There, four dozen identical Red Angus stand undisturbed. These are replacement cows, quality breeders to take the place of cows sold for beef, and they were expected to go for about $3,500 each at a special auction on Saturday, before it was canceled due to a rare incoming snowstorm. “If