Cattle Feeding Return Risk Analyzer©

 Terms of Use: 

 The Cattle Profit Calculator was developed in a partnership between North Carolina State University, Kansas State University, the North American Institute for Beef Economics Research, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency.  The intended use of this calculator is to help cattle feeders quantify expected production and price risk associated with placing feeder cattle on feed given current market conditions and past cattle feeding production risk.  The tool is not a forecasting tool, but rather a tool to demonstrate the types of risk present from key sources based on historical records and current market prices.

 The calculator relies upon models estimated using historical data for cattle fed in Kansas feed yards and in Nebraska feed yards and is thus parameterized differently for these two locations.  Cattle fed in different locations may experience different production and price risk than the calculator presents.  Furthermore, the calculator relies upon Chicago Mercantile and Chicago Board of Trade recent futures and options market prices for establishing expected prices and distributions.  As a result, the distributions are based upon the market quotes available for futures prices and option premiums and these may or may not be accurate forecasts of actual outcomes.  In addition, historical basis data are used for local basis adjustments which may not accurately predict future basis levels. 

 The tool is intended only to be used as a guide for assessing the current market-based return and risk present for feeding cattle.  No guarantees can be made whether the actual outcomes from any particular group of cattle or any feed yard will fall within the distributions calculated and presented in this tool.  This is because a lot of unknown, unexpected, and/or unique circumstances could make realized results different from those estimated in this calculator.

 Use of this calculator is at the risk of the user and North Carolina State University, Kansas State University, the North American Institute for Beef Economics Research, and USDA Risk Management Agency are not liable for results from decisions made based upon information obtained from this calculator.