The boxed beef cutout everyone quotes is a fed cattle number: it values the carcass of a grain-finished steer or heifer. But the US slaughters a second, separate population of cattle, cull cows retired from dairy and beef herds, and their meat trades in its own market with its own USDA report. That report is LM_XB405, the national cow and boneless beef cutout, and the summary line it carries is the cow cutout value.
What the report covers
The cow cutout report is organized by cow class and product state. The trade separates cows into boner and breaker classes (higher-yielding cows whose carcasses justify more fabrication) and cutter and canner classes (lower-yielding cows destined almost entirely for boneless production), with fresh and frozen sections for each, plus a 100 percent lean products section. The daily summary rolls the traded items into a single cow cutout value, the cow market's counterpart to the Choice cutout.
The product mix explains the market's character. A fed steer becomes ribeyes, strips, and a full retail cut lineup. A cull cow becomes predominantly boneless manufacturing beef: lean trim for grinding, with a limited set of whole muscle items. The cow market is therefore, in substance, the primary domestic production engine for the lean side of the grind, which ties it directly to ground beef economics.
Why the cow kill has its own cycle
Cow slaughter does not follow fed cattle slaughter; it follows herd management decisions. Ranchers cull hard in droughts and liquidation phases, flooding the lean market, and retain cows during herd rebuilds, starving it. Dairy cow culling runs on milk economics, a different cycle again. This is why the cow cutout and the Choice cutout can trend in different directions for extended periods: they are priced off different animals supplied by different decisions.
For a grind buyer, the implication is direct. When the herd cycle turns toward rebuilding and heifers and cows stay home, the domestic lean supply contracts for years, the cow cutout firms relative to the fed cutout, and the balance is imported. USDA's weekly slaughter data breaks out cow kill, so the supply side of this story is public and checkable every week.
How to read it alongside the boxed beef cutout
The two cutouts answer different questions. The Choice cutout tells you what middle meats and the fed cattle complex are doing, which is a demand story about steaks, roasts, and the retail and foodservice programs behind them. The cow cutout tells you what the manufacturing beef floor is doing, which is a supply story about culling decisions and a demand story about ground beef. Comparing the two is one of the more useful spread reads in beef: a fed cutout sagging toward a firm cow cutout compresses the incentive to grind fed trim, while a wide gap means the two markets are pulling product in opposite directions. On this site the cow cutout value updates daily alongside the boxed beef benchmarks.