CME live cattle. The contract it trades on, who produces it, the figures its price is set against, how to get exposure, and how far its price fell from its highs in five years.
Verified figures, not advice. Contract terms, production, stocks and fund costs come from the exchange, government agencies and fund issuers named beside each figure, read on 14 Oct 2026. A figure we could not verify is shown as "not verified"; a figure we worked out ourselves is marked "computed". We do not say where a price is going or whether to buy. Commodity funds and futures can lose more than you expect. Found a mistake? Tell us and we correct it.
TermValue
Exchange
CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
Contract
Live Cattle Futures
Size
40,000 pounds of live steers or heifers (70% Choice / 30% Select grade mix, Yield Grade 3, per CME rule text in a 2020 filing)
Smallest price move
0.00025 dollar per pound (multiples of $.00025) per CME rule text; this equals $10.00 per contract by our arithmetic (40,000 x 0.00025)
Delivery months
February, April, June, August, October, December (from a 2017 CME notice; physical delivery; not re-checked against the current spec page)
Benchmark grade
Live steers or heifers, USDA Yield Grade 3, 70% Choice / 30% Select; steers 1,050-1,550 lb in delivery rules (per CME 2013 advisory)
Source: cftc.gov. Read on 2026-10-14.
ProducerShare of world outputYear or season
Brazil
20.2%
2025 beef and veal production (USDA FAS Oct 2026: 12,605 of 62,315 thousand tonnes cwe; share calculated)
United States
19.0%
2025 (USDA FAS: 11,839 of 62,315; share calculated)
China
12.9%
2025 (USDA FAS: 8,010 of 62,315; share calculated)
Price alone does not say whether a commodity is dear or cheap. Stocks, balances and costs show how tight or loose the market is. We list them as published, with the date.
What it measuresFigureAs ofSource
US all cattle and calves inventory
94.2 million head (up about 0.2% from 94.0m in 2025)
1 July 2026, USDA NASS Cattle report released 24 July 2026
US beef cows
28.45 million head (down 1% year on year)
1 July 2026, USDA NASS
We show no chart for Live cattle. We could not find a second, independent price series to check our first one against, and we only publish a chart when two sources agree.
ProductStructureAnnual costSource
WisdomTree Livestock
AIGL (LSE, Borsa Italiana), WisdomTree Commodity Securities Limited (Jersey)
Exchange-traded commodity (ETC), debt security, synthetic fully funded collateralised swap, tracks Bloomberg Commodity Livestock Subindex 4W Total Return (BCOMLI4T): live cattle 72.23% and lean hogs 27.77% (index composition 8 Oct 2026); not live-cattle only
0.49%
Futures roll. Futures-based funds must keep selling expiring contracts and buying later ones; when later contracts cost more (contango) each roll can erode the fund's return even if the spot price is flat, and in backwardation rolling can add to it (paraphrased from a sugar fund prospectus; same mechanism applies to every futures-based product). (teucrium.com)
Live cattle is physically delivered and driven by a single country's herd cycle and animal-disease events (such as screwworm), so supply shocks can be abrupt and exposure funds hold a mix that is not cattle-only.
A price move says what buyers paid, not what the commodity is worth. For what we mean by value, see What is value?
Figures read on 14 Oct 2026 from the pages below. Price history is our own calculation from two public sources.
All sources for this page (5)
Questions people ask
What moves the price of Live cattle?
New World screwworm: the US-Mexico border has been closed to cattle imports since May 2025 (about 1.2m Mexican cattle a year were imported in 2020-24); September 2026 imports were down 97% on a year earlier.
How can I get exposure to Live cattle?
Through futures on CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), or through funds and exchange-traded products. Step 6 lists the ones we verified, with structure and cost. Funds that hold futures can differ from the spot price.
Why can a fund differ from the price I see?
A fund that holds futures must sell contracts about to expire and buy later ones. When the later ones cost more (contango) each roll can cost money; when they cost less it can add. So its return is not the spot price.