When the bank that finances your calves, or the buyer who wants your steers, asks for your price history, the easy answer is a public auction report, which answers a different question. The USDA’s Oklahoma auction summary for October 18 to 24, 2026, lists two rows of 500 to 549 lb steers, 630 head together, sold from $335.00 to $482.00 per hundredweight (100 lb). Your buyer’s bid is one more price, and the report does not hold it. On 100 steers of 550 lb, every $10 per hundredweight of difference is $5,500. Record the bid your own buyer gives you each week beside the report average for your weight, and send the lender that record.
A price record is a table on paper or in a spreadsheet, one per class of cattle, with one line a week. At the top go the buyer and the report. Each line holds the report’s average, your buyer’s bid and the gap between the two, which this article calls basis. Below the top comes a selling rule written before the first line, such as “sell a quarter of the calves when the bid is within $10 per hundredweight of the report average”.
Does a public auction report answer what the lender asks?
Only in part. The report is a weekly average of what sold, and its notes say what it leaves out. It “is reflective of the majority of classes and grades of livestock offered for sale”, and sales that “do not fit within reporting guidelines” are not included. Prices are reported “on an FOB basis, unless otherwise noted”, which means before freight.
Inside one class the spread is wide. For steers of 500 to 549 lb the report has two rows, of 256 and 374 head, with averages of $448.20 and $430.48 per hundredweight, $17.72 apart. The report tags some rows with a description, such as unweaned, fleshy or thin fleshed.
The level also moves. Compared with the week before, the report has feeder steers $10.00 to $20.00 higher and steer calves $25.00 to $30.00 higher. Last week’s report is not this week’s. Your buyer’s bid is the price you were actually offered, and no report holds it.
Does the gap between my bid and the report stay the same?
No, and the studies find it moves more for cattle than for grain. In Kansas State’s basis guide, Dhuyvetter writes that basis “can generally be predicted more accurately than either futures or cash prices”. He adds that “livestock basis tends to be more variable, and somewhat harder to predict, than grain basis”. His basis is the cash price minus the futures price. The gap in this article is your bid minus a report average, so read his finding as a direction, not as a size.
A Brazilian study of eight cattle markets, from 1995 to 2001, measured how much price risk hedging live cattle removed on the BM&F, Brazil’s futures exchange at the time: between 42% and 52%. About half of the price risk stayed in the basis, which a hedge cannot remove.
When the report rises $10 to $20 in a week, as it did in Oklahoma, a bid that rises only $5 shows up as a wider gap on that week’s line. Whatever the report does not cover stays in the gap, and only a line a week shows how large that is.
What goes on each line of the record?
One line a week, with your buyer’s bid at the center and the report beside it. At the top, write the class of cattle, the buyer, the delivery terms, and the report, with the web address where you read it: the Oklahoma summary, or the USDA report nearest your market. Write there too the weekday on which you will ask for the bid, and how many past years your average will use.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Date | The calendar day, with the year |
| Time | The hour you got the bid, not the hour you wrote it down |
| Lot | Sex, weight and condition in the buyer’s words, for the cattle you would really sell |
| Report average | The published average for the closest weight class, with the report’s name and week |
| Buyer’s bid | What the buyer named at the top offered that day, asked directly, in dollars per hundredweight |
| Basis | Buyer’s bid minus report average, written as an amount and the word “under” or “over” |
| Terms | Before freight or delivered, the shrink and the payment date, in the buyer’s words |
Both prices must be in the same unit before you subtract. The report’s main rows are dollars per hundredweight at actual weight, and it lists some rows per head. A bid of $2,300 per head for a 520 lb steer is $442.31 per hundredweight: $2,300 divided by 5.2. Write the conversion on the line.
The report is a weekly average and your bid comes from one day, so write the bid on the line of the week it falls in. When the report or the bid is missing, leave the line blank. Never pair a bid with a report from another week. The settlement the buyer sends after a delivery is a different number: what you were paid for that load, after any discount. Keep settlements on a separate sheet, never in the bid column.
What do you do with the record after a few years?
For each month of the year, you take the average, widest and narrowest basis. The average is the expected basis that selling and holding decisions need, and the widest and narrowest show how far a month can stray from it. How many years go into the average is your decision, written at the top, and studies have reached different answers. On Kansas data from 1989 to 1997, Dhuyvetter and Kastens found four years of history best for wheat basis, and five to seven for corn, sorghum and soybeans.
Repeating the test on data through 2005, Taylor, Dhuyvetter and Kastens found that using less history forecast basis better than longer averages, the main exception being wheat basis at harvest. The gains were generally too small to rule out chance. Both studies are of grain, not cattle. Average the years you have, write down how many that is, and revisit the choice each year. With twelve weekly lines you can compare this week with the eleven before, but you cannot yet say what is normal for the time of year.
Write the selling rule before the first line, because a rule written after the prices are in can end up written to fit them, usually in the direction of waiting a little longer. Write which bid or which basis leads to which decision, for example “when the bid is within $10 per hundredweight of the report average, sell a quarter of the calves”. Once a few years are on the record, you can tie the rule to the average for that month. Beside it, write the name of the person who can act on it without calling anyone. The floor under any bid you accept is your lowest acceptable price, worked out from the farm’s own costs.
Where to start
Twenty minutes to set up the record, ten minutes a week to keep it. Other articles on selling are in the marketing library.
The basis column serves three selling decisions, each covered in its own article. Before you take a forward bid, compare the basis built into it with the basis you expect at delivery, as worked through in whether locking in the price now is worth it. Before you hedge, add the expected basis to the futures price you would lock; a bid under the reference lowers the sum, and the result is the price you keep after hedging. Before you hold cattle to sell later, compare today’s basis with the usual one for the months ahead, as in whether waiting to sell is worth it.
All three start from your buyer’s basis, not from the price on the screen. Anyone can find last year’s auction report. The basis in the bid your buyer made this week exists only if someone on the farm wrote it down. That is ten minutes a week of farm management, and you use the result at every sale.