Colorado Public Radio Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, headquartered out of Johnstown, touts itself as the largest feedlot company in the U.S., and one of the biggest in the world. Its locations, spread across six states, have capacity for 865,000 head of cattle.
Filling those lots has been challenging of late, said the company’s head market analyst, Billy Schmitz. The U.S. cattle population is at its lowest level in three-quarters of a century. Ongoing droughts are playing a part. Ranchers are also selling cattle to take advantage of historic beef prices, instead of using those cows to rebuild their herds.
But, Schmitz said, the biggest problem in filling the pens of Five Rivers feedlots is the closure of the U.S. southern border to livestock trade with Mexico. Cattle imported from Mexico typically make up about five percent of the company’s supply.
In place since last July, that closure has nothing to do with the Trump administration’s trade negotiations disrupting international markets. It is due solely to the federal government’s all-out effort to prevent a parasitic fly from crossing the border for the first time since the 1960s.