Just caught the hog market pushing higher again mid-week. Lean hog futures were steady to up 45 cents in the front months, and USDA's national base price jumped to $85.13 - that's a solid $4.94 move from Tuesday. The CME Lean Hog Index climbed another 27 cents to $82.03 on the 19th.



What caught my eye was the pork carcass cutout value hitting $93.98 per cwt, up 51 cents. Slaughter numbers came in at 495,000 head for the day, pushing the weekly total to 1.404 million after some revisions. Down about 77,000 head from the previous week but still running ahead of last year's pace by over 64,000 head.

Contracts closed mixed - Feb hogs at $87.850 flat, but Apr hogs popped 42.5 cents to $95.600 and May moved up 27.5 cents to $99.275. The butt and picnic cuts were softer though, which is interesting given the overall strength in the hog complex. Wondering if we see more consolidation or if this rally has more room to run.
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