USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report for March will be released tomorrow. Analysts’ pre-report consensus estimates are for the total inventory on feed to be 99.3 percent of last year. Those estimates imply an on-feed inventory of 11.5 million head.

The pre-report estimates were split on placements. There were some estimates of placements coming in below last year. The consensus estimate for placements was 100.3 percent of last year, which would imply a total of 1,559,000 head. That estimate comes from a very wide range of guesses, from 4.7 percent lower than last year at 96.3 percent to 5 percent higher at 105 percent.  Last February, there was a particularly low number of placements at 1.554 million head, which was down 3...