Steak lovers beware: Beef prices may continue to rise

Cattle bosses on the Great Western Trail were dreamers, and the rangy longhorns they drove from Texas through here on the way to Kansas and Nebraska, fetched fortunes, but they probably never imagined this future for Indian Territory 150 years later: The humble beef cow is the mother of Oklahoma agriculture.

Markets for cows and calves — and stockers, feeders, even old, worn-out bulls — are on a roll. Oklahoma beef cattle on the hoof were worth about $3.3 billion in January 2022, the most recent estimates, more than hogs and pigs, broilers, hay, winter wheat, cotton, corn and soybeans.

Nationally, with the cattle inventory at its lowest level in more than 70 years, beef prices are through the barn roof.

Consumers feel it from the fast-food drive-thru, to the steak house to the supermarket meat case — and there's no relief in sight. This year started with the lowest U.S. cattle inventory since 1951 and the smallest calf crop since 1948, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

High retail prices for beef in stores and restaurants haven't put a dent in consumer demand, however, specialists say.

Beef eaters had better brace for even higher record prices

Drought and high feed costs have state cattle raisers selling more calf producers — cows and heifers — than usual. The supply of cattle in feed yards, the last stop before slaughter, started 2024 strong, with sufficient inventory for meat packers, according to Oklahoma Farm Report.

Fewer cattle ready for purchase in feed yards, as well as lower numbers further up the supply chain, will have meat packers competing for cattle, "which should lead to higher prices for cattle feeders, especially in the second half of 2024 ... this could send beef prices to record levels in 2024 and 2025, as we hit the supply bottom of the current cattle cycle," Oklahoma Farm Report said.

Northwest Oklahoma rancher: Times are good, but not great

So, is it a good time to be an Oklahoma rancher?

"It is. Profitability is really good for anyone that's got some management skills," said Weston Givens, co-owner of Davison & Sons Cattle Co. in Arnett, about 150 miles northwest of OKC, with his wife, Ruth Ann, and in-laws, Charles and Sherry Nichols. Ruth Ann Givens' great-grandfather, George Davison, founded the ranch in 1908.

It now keeps a commercial herd of about 1,200 cows, producing an annual Angus-Hereford crossbred calf crop on 40,000 acres of native grass around Arnett. About 92% to 93% of the ranch's cows have a calf every year. The national average is about 75%. The operation is vertically integrated, owning calves from birth to grazing grass (sometimes a winter wheat pasture near Orlando) through the feed yard until sold to a packer.

Givens, 52, a former president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association , knows the business up and down the supply chain. Times are good, he said, but not great.

Givens said it's important for ranchers to "keep contact with the consumer" during times of stress, whether good or bad for business. For example, Oklahoma cattle raisers reached out during the COVID chaos that hit meatpacking plants and their communities in 2020-2021 by promoting ranches that sold meat directly to the public, he said.

Now, with the worst of COVID behind them, "Prices for everything are high," Givens said, referring to what it takes to feed and care for cattle, "and the general cost of living is high. But I don't think anybody's going to be crying the blues about how hard things are now."

With historic beef prices likely ahead, and beef history behind us this 150th anniversary of the Great Western Trail — the last of Oklahoma's historic cattle trails — here is a look at how the beef cattle business evolved in Oklahoma and how it works in 2024.

Trail of Tears included livestock: Oldest cattle facts for Oklahoma

For all cowboy lore and legend, it wasn't Texans who brought the first cattle to, and through, what is now Oklahoma.

Cattle came here on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, when the Five Tribes — Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole — were removed from the southeastern United States and resettled in Indian Territory. For their part, the Cherokee Nation-owned 1839 Cherokee Meat Co. now keeps a herd of 200 cattle, plus 250 bison, and has a meat processing facility and retail shop in Tahlequah.

"In addition to bringing large herds of livestock with them, they also practiced a system of communal land ownership that favored open range grazing," Jim Hoy writes of the state cattle industry in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture. "This in turn led to increased herd sizes, because until the California gold rush of the 1850s there was no readily available market for their cattle."

In the 1840s and 1850s, some cattle were being herded north from Texas through Indian Territory, in addition to the tribes' herds. By 1861 and the Civil War, the Cherokee Nation alone had nearly 250,000 head of cattle.

"Unfortunately," Hoy wrote, "the havoc of the war and the depredations of cattle thieves" cost the Five Tribes about 300,000 head by the end of the war in 1865.

Then came the Texans, in earnest, by the drove.

Three separate cattle trails crossed Indian Territory, present Oklahoma

The Chisholm Trail gets the most attention, and, in its day, it was considered to be "one of the wonders of the western world," historians say.

"Herds with as many as ten thousand cattle were driven from Texas over the trail to Kansas. The trail acquired its name from trader Jesse Chisholm, a part-Cherokee, who just before the Civil War had built a trading post in what is now western Oklahoma City ."

Before they headed west, cattle drives went east — into eastern Indian Territory, then to the middle, then west.

These were the three cattle trails that crossed what is now Oklahoma in the 1800s, according to the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture:

• East: The Shawnee Trail. Historians say Texas cattle were first driven across eastern Indian Territory to Missouri, following the Shawnee Trail, crossing the Red River near Preston, Texas, into the Choctaw Nation. Drovers pushed herds past Fort Gibson to the Grand River and north into Kansas, then turned them east into Missouri. Another branch of the trail went into Arkansas and north to Missouri. More than 200,000 longhorns went up the Shawnee Trail in 1866. The next year, six states had banned cattle drives because of the fear of tick-borne Texas-fever.

• Middle: The Chisholm Trail. "The Chisholm Trail crossed from Texas over into Indian Territory at Red River Station, near present Ringgold, Texas, heading north. ... The western route, primarily for freight and stages ... ran through Concho, Fort Reno, and Kingfisher Stage Station, and then turned northeast. The eastern branch, used primarily for cattle, passed west of present Mustang, crossed through Yukon, and passed to the west of Piedmont. The eastern trail rejoined the western trail at Red Fork Ranch, or Dover Stage Stand, now the town of Dover."

• West: The Great Western Trail. "In 1874 John T. Lytle blazed a new path beyond the western edge of settlement ... to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. ... It reached the Red River about ten miles north of present Vernon, Texas. Corwin Doan ... opened a trading post on the river in 1878. ... The ford soon became known as Doan's Crossing. ... The trail then pushed northward ... (passing) along the western edge of the Comanche-Kiowa-Apache Reservation and (entering) the most dangerous section of the route. ... Here the drovers frequently met American Indians who wanted to supplement their meager government rations with fresh beef. ... It remained the most used until the cattle trailing industry ended in the 1890s."

Meatpacking was OKC's first industry; then came the stockyards

In 1910, the industrialization of the beef business had arrived in the still-young city of Oklahoma City. Meatpacking was OKC's first major industry.

"Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce officials wanted to add their city to others that prospered with stockyards," according to J'Nell L. Pate, writing in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture. The chamber invited big companies and several agreed to come. They called it Packingtown. The stockyards went up immediately.

"The market soon employed more than four thousand people, attracted seventeen commission firms, and created a livestock exchange," Pate wrote. "As occurred at most stockyards, local entrepreneurs constructed a coliseum in 1922 for stock shows, rodeos, and Future Farmers of America events."

By 1950, the Oklahoma National Stockyards had become a major exchange for stocker and feeder cattle.

Oklahoma National Stockyards: 'the largest stocker-feeder cattle market in the world'

OKC was, and is, well situated for a big stockyards, in the middle of the country and just about on the dividing line between cow-calf production on one side, toward the east, and stocking, feeding and finishing on the west — a situation that continues to funnel calves onto Oklahoma grass pastures and winter wheat for grazing to this day.

"By the early 1980s the Oklahoma City stockyards emerged as the nation's number one cattle market, tallying receipts of a million animals per year," Pate wrote.

Today, the stockyards, spread across 120 acres with headquarters at 2501 Exchange Ave., bills itself as the "largest stocker-feeder cattle market in the world," with nine livestock commission companies operating and auctions on Mondays and Tuesdays.

RELATED: It's Oklahoma National Stockyards, not Oklahoma City National Stockyards, for good reason

Oklahoma has around 100 local stockyards and livestock sale barns

The Oklahoma National Stockyards isn't the only stockyards in the OKC metro area.

El Reno is the home of OKC West Livestock Market, with cows and bulls sold on Mondays, calves and stockers on Tuesdays, and feeder steers and heifers on Wednesdays.

In addition, across the state are nearly 100 local stockyards and livestock sale barns, according to the Packers and Stockyards Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service.

Oklahoma Panhandle has some, not all, of state's cattle feed yards

Where do cattle in Oklahoma go to finish before slaughter? Most go to feed yards, mostly around Amarillo, Texas, to get a high-energy diet, grow fast, add muscle and meat and optimize fat. Feed yards are members of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association trade group. Oklahoma has eight of the 98 member yards:

• Buffalo Feeders LLC, Buffalo.
• Alfadale Stock Farm LLC, El Reno.
• CRI Feeders of Guymon LLC, Guymon.
• Champion Feeders, Guymon (based in Hereford, Texas).
• Champion Feeders, Hooker.
• Cow Creek Feeders LLC, Keyes.
• Cimarron Feeders, Texhoma.
• Xcel Feedyard LLC, Watonga.

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'Backgrounding' feedlots prep cattle for finishing at regular feed yards

Some cattle first go to "backgrounding" feedlots, where they're "straightened out" after long hauls, sorted, acclimated and socialized before heading to intensive feeding in a regular feed yard. Backgrounding feed yards in Oklahoma are:

• Abernathy Cattle Co., Altus.
• CK Land and Cattle LLC, Fay.
• 3M&H Land & Cattle LLC, Gage.
• Power Plus Feeders, Hobart.
• Freeman Feedlot Inc., Texhoma.

Cattle are many, meat packers are few for Oklahoma-grown beef

Where do Oklahoma cattle go to slaughter? Some farms and ranches slaughter, package, and market their own beef, and there are small meat packing companies, but most wind up at one of three major companies with five regional packing plants.

• Tyson Fresh Meats, two plants in Amarillo. Headquarters: Springdale, Arkansas.
• JBS, Cactus, Texas. (Retail brands include Swift and Pilgrim's.) Headquarters: Greeley, Colorado.
• National Beef Packing Co. LLC, Dodge City, Kansas, and Liberal, Kansas. (Retail brands include Black Canyon Angus Beef and Certified Hereford Beef.) Headquarters: Kansas City, Missouri.

Oklahoma cattle appeared in the earliest moo-vies

The cattle business in Oklahoma has been important for so long that filmmakers even before Hollywood were documenting it. It helped that the birth of movies coincided with the last days of the territorial frontier, which hung on just about until statehood in 1907.

"Early shorts, made by the Edison Company, focused on real cowboys and Indians doing the sorts of things audiences had enjoyed in Wild West shows," according to William Hagen , in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture.

In 1904, three films, running no more than 90 seconds, were created for Kinetoscope or nickelodeon programs, with titles tied to the era. The shorts were filmed near Bliss (Old Bliss), Oklahoma Territory.

• "Driving Cattle To Pasture"
• "Cowboys and Indians Fording River in a Wagon"
• "A Brush Between Cowboys and Indians"

'The Farmer and the Cowman should be friends'

Movie makers soon turned more to outlaws and oil booms in telling Oklahoma stories, but the business and sagas of ranching, especially the passing of the open range, also continued to be featured, as Hagen describes:

" 'The Oklahoma Kid' (1939), starring Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney as unlikely cowboys, joins William S. Hart's 'Tumbleweeds' (1925), both versions of 'Cimarron' ( 1931 , 1960 ), and even 'Oklahoma!' (1955) in portraying the process and conflicts associated with the closing of the frontier, ending the free-range livelihood of many cowboys."

"Oklahoma!" set the closing of the range and the advent of fencing and farming to music with "The Farmer and the Cowman."

"The farmer and the cowman should be friends, Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends. One man likes to push a plough, the other likes to chase a cow, But that's no reason why they can't be friends."

Cattle and pop culture: 'Home in Oklahoma' with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

Perhaps the clearest picture of Oklahoma cattle ranching crossing paths with popular entertainment was a 1946 movie, "Home in Oklahoma," filmed at the Flying "L" Ranch in Davis and starring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Its world premieres were in Ada and Ardmore.

It featured three pieces of music celebrating ranch life in the state: "Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma," "Home in Oklahoma," and "Hereford Heaven," the last one written by Gov. Roy J. Turner, a renowned Hereford breeder , and performed and recorded by the Flying L Ranch Quartet.

Turner and a partner ran a 9,600-acre ranch near Sulphur that they called "Hereford Heaven," also a popular nickname for southern Oklahoma cattle country in general, especially Murray County. The name persists in Sulphur's Hereford Heaven Round-Up Club , its Hereford Heaven Arena, and annual Hereford Heaven Stampede Open Rodeo.

Singing cowboy legacies in Oklahoma: Gene Autry bought one ranch, and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans got married on another

Rogers wasn't the only singing movie cowboy to earn Oklahomans admiration. In 1941, the town of Berwyn, about 25 miles south of Davis, changed its name to Gene Autry .

The star had bought a spread at the edge of town in 1939 and named it the Flying "A" Ranch. Autry joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 and sold the ranch at the start of World War II.

But Rogers and Evans tied a ribbon on Oklahoma's cattle history and cowboy heritage by tying the knot: They got married in Davis at the Flying "L" Ranch in New Year's Eve in 1947.

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U.S. Census of Agriculture: Latest cattle facts for Oklahoma

According to the latest U.S. Census of Agriculture , released earlier this year using data from 2022:

• Note: The data was collected in 202 2, when most of the Southern Plains was drought-stricken.
• Beef inventory and cattle operations are declining, but the average herd size is increasing: 46% of people in Oklahoma who own cattle own fewer than 20 head; 75% of state cattle raisers own fewer than 50 head.
• “Smaller producers are growing beef for their own consumption or for show animals, student projects or for a hobby. On the other hand, consolidated operations are multigenerational family farms with large herds. We’re seeing less middle-sized cattle herds because making the profit margin is difficult,” said Amy Hagerman , OSU Extension ag policy specialist.
• The average age of an Oklahoma farmer-rancher (all, not just cattle producers) is the late 50s − older in the Panhandle and younger in central and western Oklahoma.
• “The average producer age has been trending up slightly or fairly flat for several census years, but the number of new and beginning producers replacing older ones or working alongside them in northwest and western Oklahoma is surprising,” Hagerman said. “It’s encouraging to see younger producers, especially in parts of the state with larger operations. That might be an indicator that people are returning to the farm.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Steak lovers beware: Beef prices may continue to rise