Western Grocer Serving the industry since 1916
Plenty of locally grown and harvested Western Canadian beef is available for barbeque season. Cattle on feed in Alberta and Saskatchewan feedlots have numbered over one million head each month since November 2021. It is rare that the number of cattle on feed surpasses the million head mark starting in November; the last time this happened was November 2006. Larger numbers of cattle on feed are supportive to beef supply this spring and summer.
In the first quarter of 2022, Western Canadian fed slaughter (youthful cattle) was up 6% from the same period in 2021, with slaughter utilization keeping record pace at 94%. Western Canadian steer carcass weights averaged 921 lbs, 11 lbs heavier than the first quarter of 2021 and 25 lbs heavier than the five-year average. The large numbers of heavier cattle are supporting Western Canadian Prime+AAA production. Eighty percent of all ‘A’ grades were Prime+AAA in the first quarter of 2022, up from 75% in the first quarter of 2021 and 70% for the five-year average. There is more supply in the pipeline: on April 1st, 2022, cattle on feed numbers were up 10% from April 2021.
