Livestock auctions could be coming to an end at Americas last big-city stockyard
On the edge of a thriving downtown dotted with luxury hotels and trendy restaurants is a more than 100-year-old relic of Oklahoma City’s western heritage: One of the world’s largest cattle stockyards.But maybe not for much longer.The Oklahoma National Stockyards — the last big-city stockyard in the U.S.— is for sale.
The $27 million price tag includes 100 acres (40 hectares) of prime property along the Oklahoma River in a growing city of roughly 700,000 residents, where a state-of-the-art NBA arena is set to break ground and a developer is pushing plans for the country’s tallest skyscraper.Although the stockyard’s owners are hopeful a buyer will keep the cattle coming, they acknowledge the land is attractive for redevelopment.The sale is a sign of the times for livestock auctions and America’s cattle market, a volatile industry squeezed in recent years by drought, higher production costs and the lowest number of cattle in the U.S.since the 1950s.President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on imported goods has created uncertainty in the industry, although the potential impact is not yet clear.
The U.S.is the world’s largest producer of beef but is still a net beef importer, with Canada and Mexico among the top countries accounting for U.S.
beef imports.The number of cattle moving through the maze of wooden pens in Oklahoma City is down roughly 20% over the past two years, said Jerry Reynolds, the stockyard’s president.The same family has owned the grounds since 1910, but Reynolds said younger generations of the owners are simply not interested in overseeing a major stockyard and the daily grind that entails: a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation with tens of thousands of animals auctioned every week and a seemingly endless maintenance to-do list.“The handwriting has kind of been on the wall for a long time, as the cities grow and surround these facilities,” said Derrell Peel, a professor at Oklahoma State University who s...