Cattle and calves on feed for the slaughter market in the United States for feedlots with capacity of 1,000 or more head totaled 11.6 million head on May 1, 2018. The inventory was 5 percent above May 1, 2017. This is the second highest May 1 inventory since the series began in 1996, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in its report last week.

There were 730,000 head of cattle on feed in Iowa feedlots with a capacity of 1,000 or more head. This was up 7 percent from 2017, ...