One place for every sourced price on the site
Each live tool starts with the original spreadsheet's own default numbers, updated where a current market price was available — never guessed or invented. This page lists every one of those updates in one place: what it's for, the current value, where it came from, and how current it is — so it's easy to see at a glance what's fresh, what's still an open gap, and where to look when it's time to refresh everything at once.
One shared "Market Prices & Factors" store
Starting 2026-09-21, every price and bull-economics figure on this page is entered once, in the "Market Prices & Factors" calculator on the home page, and saved only in this browser. Every tool below (A1/A2, D1/Stockers, B1a, and the home page's own "Cow Operating Cost (BCU)" calculator) reads that same value instead of keeping its own separate copy — each field stays freely editable per-page as a local override, but the default everywhere now comes from one place. This replaces the old pattern of pasting the same number into every tool by hand, and closes the drift it caused: building this store surfaced a herd-bull cost that had silently diverged into three different numbers across the site ($4,500/hd on the home page's BCU calculator, $4,000/hd on B1a, $4,000/hd on A2) — all now unified at $4,500/hd, 4-yr life, 2% death loss, 1,650.7 lb salvage weight (see "Herd bull economics" in the table below). Weight-based prices (steer, heifer, cull cow) still interpolate off their own weight/price curves — see the curves card below — but those curves are now rescaled live to whatever flat price is entered in the shared store, not fixed at build time.
USDA AMS market reports
Pulled directly from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service weekly livestock auction and slaughter-cattle reports — the most direct, citable source used on this site. These rows update themselves: every Monday an automatic job on the site's GitHub repository asks USDA's MyMarketNews service for newer editions of the same reports and, when the same class of cattle has a new price, changes it here and as the default in every tool that uses it. Steer, heifer, stocker and cull prices count only plain lots (lines USDA marks Fancy, Full, Fleshy, Thin Fleshed, Unweaned or Value Added, or Light Weight, High or Low dressing, are left out). Auction prices are the head-weighted average of every matching line in the last four weekly reports, so one thin week does not swing a price; with fewer than 10 head in that window the last price stays. The fed cattle price is already a national weekly weighted average and uses the newest week. The bred cow price comes from the Texas summary (young 2–4 yr cows, Medium & Large 1 and 1–2, 2nd–3rd stage); until November 2026 it came from the Dalhart auction alone, which rarely had a matching line. A move of more than 25% in one week is never applied automatically; it is flagged for a person to check. Values a producer has typed and saved in their own browser are never changed.
| Value | Used in | Source report | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3,365.18/hd | Bred cow purchase price — A1 "Bid price", A2 "Cost/head" | USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "BRED COWS, Medium & Large 1 and 1–2", young (2–4 yr), 2nd–3rd stage (12 lines, head-weighted average): 80 hd, 905–1,385 lb, $1,925–$4,200/hd, average $3,365.18/hd — 4 weekly reports, Oct 16, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
| $215.21/cwt | Fed/finished cattle sale price — Stockers "Feedyard" paths (both sub-paths) | USDA AMS "5 Area Weekly Weighted Average Direct Slaughter Cattle" (ams_2477.pdf) — live FOB steers, Over 80% Choice, $208–$219/cwt, 23,327 hd, 1,450–1,740 lb, weighted avg $215.21/cwt |
report dated Nov 9, 2026 |
| $3,574.39/hd | Bred heifer sale price — shared store's mp_bredHeiferPrice, read by B1a "Bred heifer sale price" |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "BRED HEIFERS, Medium & Large 1" (6 lines, head-weighted average): 89 hd, 812–1,347 lb, $2,350–$3,950/hd, average $3,574.39/hd — 2 weekly reports, Oct 16, 2026 to Oct 30, 2026 |
Oct 30, 2026 |
| $401.22/cwt | Steer price (516.4 lb reference) — shared store's mp_steerPrice, read by A1/A2, Stockers' calf purchase price and My Ranch; rescales STEER_PRICE_SLIDE |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "FEEDER STEERS, Medium & Large 1, 500–549 lb", plain lots only (3 lines, head-weighted average): 412 hd, 500–549 lb, $350.00–$450.00/cwt, average $401.22/cwt — 3 weekly reports, Oct 23, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
| $365.76/cwt | Heifer price (531.3 lb reference) — shared store's mp_heiferPrice, read by A1/A2, B1a and My Ranch; rescales HEIFER_PRICE_SLIDE |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "FEEDER HEIFERS, Medium & Large 1, 500–549 lb", plain lots only (3 lines, head-weighted average): 277 hd, 500–545 lb, $320.00–$410.00/cwt, average $365.76/cwt — 3 weekly reports, Oct 23, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
| $332.75/cwt | 700 lb path sale price — shared store's mp_stocker700Price, read by Stockers |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "FEEDER STEERS, Medium & Large 1, 700–749 lb", plain lots only (3 lines, head-weighted average): 179 hd, 700–745 lb, $285.00–$365.00/cwt, average $332.75/cwt — 3 weekly reports, Oct 23, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
| $338.56/cwt | 800 lb path sale price — shared store's mp_stocker800Price, read by Stockers |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "FEEDER STEERS, Medium & Large 1, 800–849 lb", plain lots only (3 lines, head-weighted average): 480 hd, 806–844 lb, $290.00–$354.00/cwt, average $338.56/cwt — 3 weekly reports, Oct 23, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
| $125.06/cwt | Cull cow price (1,279.4 lb Boner reference) — shared store's mp_cullCowPrice, read by A1/A2, D1 and My Ranch; rescales CULL_COW_PRICE_SLIDE |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "SLAUGHTER COWS, Boner 80–85%, average dressing", plain lots only (3 lines, head-weighted average): 229 hd, 120–1,462 lb, $114.00–$147.50/cwt, average $125.06/cwt — 3 weekly reports, Oct 23, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
| $162.90/cwt | Cull bull price — shared store's mp_cullBullPrice, read by A2, B1a and My Ranch (bull salvage) |
USDA AMS "Texas Weekly Cattle Auction Summary" (ams_1955.pdf) — "SLAUGHTER BULLS, 1–2, average dressing", plain lots only (3 lines, head-weighted average): 52 hd, 1,045–2,265 lb, $145.00–$176.00/cwt, average $162.90/cwt — 3 weekly reports, Oct 23, 2026 to Nov 6, 2026 |
Nov 6, 2026 |
"2026 D03 Budgets" reference workbook
A budgeting workbook shared directly by the user (2026 D03 Budgets 3-10-26 1.xlsm), used as the flat, authoritative current price for these classes. Until 2026-11-04 it also set the steer ($530), heifer ($460), cull cow ($180), cull bull ($190) and stocker 700/800 lb ($380/$360) prices; those now come from the weekly USDA Texas auction summary above. The weight curves below keep the D03 numbers as their anchor points, so the live curve is the D03 shape scaled by (USDA price ÷ D03 price).
| Value | Used in | Note |
|---|---|---|
| $215.21/cwt | Fed/finished cattle sale price — shared store's mp_fedCattlePrice, read by Stockers "Feedyard" paths (both sub-paths) | Same USDA AMS figure as the market-reports card above, now centralized |
| $3,365.18/hd | Bred cow purchase price — shared store's mp_bredCowPrice, read by A1 "Bid price" and A2 "Cost/head" | Same USDA AMS figure as the market-reports card above, now centralized |
| $4,500/hd, 4 yr life, 1,650.7 lb salvage wt, 2% death loss, 25 cows/bull | Herd bull economics — shared store's mp_bullCost/mp_bullLife/mp_bullSalvageWeight/mp_bullDeathLoss/mp_perBull, read directly from the "Market Prices & Factors" calculator itself, feeding the home page's own "Cow Operating Cost (BCU)" calculator's read-only bull-economics readout, plus A2's "Herd bull" card and B1a's "Bull investment" card | The $4,500/hd figure and 1,650.7 lb reference weight are the original BCU-calculator's assumption (never independently re-sourced); see the shared-store card above for why this is now the single number used everywhere instead of three drifting ones |
| $210/ton, 1,000 lb round bale | Hay price — shared store's mp_hayPrice/mp_hayRollLb (unified 2026-10-21), read by the home page's "Cow Operating Cost (BCU)" calculator as $/roll (price × bale weight, $105/roll by default) and by My Ranch as the starting hay price of a new ranch (each ranch can still set its own, with a one-click "Use it" back to the site price) | $105/roll is the original BCU sheet's value; the 2026 District 3 (Rolling Plains) budgets use $200/ton ($0.10/lb) |
Weight/price curves (Sept 4, 2026 local Texas auction data)
Digitized from "Local Texas Auction Data" screenshots (Cattlemen's Livestock, Dalhart & Tulia TX) the user sent directly, broken out by weight class (and, for cull cows, by condition grade). Rescaled on 2026-09-16 so each curve's reference point exactly matches the "2026 D03 Budgets" flat price for that class, while keeping the curve's real shape (how price changes with weight). Since 2026-09-21 this rescale happens live, against whatever flat price is currently in the shared Market Prices store, instead of being baked in once — each tool that needs a curve keeps its own frozen copy of the Sept-4 shape (*_PRICE_SLIDE_BASE in the code) and re-derives the live table from it on every load and every shared-store change. B1a's heifer curve is a duplicate of A1/A2's (same source data, copied rather than shared across files to avoid a load-order dependency between pages).
| Curve | Used in | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Steer | A1/A2 steer weight slider | 397–1,140 lb, $629.02→$318.20/cwt |
| Heifer | A1/A2 heifer weight slider; B1a weaned/pre-breed-cull/open-cull prices (own embedded copy) | 337–922 lb, $554.10→$321.60/cwt |
| Cull cow | A2 cull-cow weight slider; D1 upgraded-cow price (proportional to mp_cullCowPrice, preserving the same Boner→Breaker ratio the curve gives at 1,300 lb, without embedding the full curve) | 1,143.4–1,496.1 lb (Lean/Boner/Breaker), $178.70–$180.00/cwt |
| Cull bull | A2 cull-bull field | Single point, 1,650.7 lb, $190.00/cwt |
Not yet sourced — still the original workbook's numbers
Flagged on their own pages rather than silently left stale. Listed here too so they're easy to find and close out in one pass, rather than rediscovering them tool by tool.
Refreshing all of this later
The USDA AMS prices above refresh automatically each week (see that card). For everything else, when it's time to update prices again: re-screenshot or re-pull a current "Local Texas Auction Data" report for the weight-class curves, then enter the new flat numbers once in the home page's "Market Prices & Factors" calculator — every tool that reads the shared store picks the change up automatically (live in every open tab, and on next load elsewhere), with each weight-class curve rescaling itself the same rescale-to-anchor way rather than being replaced outright, so weight sliders keep behaving sensibly across their whole range, not just at the default point. The few fields that don't yet read from the shared store (see "Not yet sourced" above) still need a manual edit on their own page. Every place a number changes, it should get the same treatment as everything on this page: cited here, dated, and flagged on its own tool page.