by the uncertainty in the hog market. This morning the USDA reported that packers have 3.04% more hogs scheduled than on this date last year and 45K more than on this date last week. With market-ready hogs supposedly down 3.47% from last year, it seems reasonable that scheduled numbers should also be down.

Maybe this is telling us that producers are motivated sellers right now. If they are, they may have plenty of heavy hogs to give packers the luxury of chopping their bids at a fairly brisk clip. The six-day moving average carcass weight is still running about 5.0# over one year ago. If hogs gain about 2.5# per day, it may be possible that producers could hurry about 2-days of kill to the market to get the carcass weight to shed 5#.

Packers really hacked away at their bid on Friday.

Best wishes,

dhm