There's cautious optimism among cattle producers in western Canada.

Brian Perillat is a senior analyst with Canfax.

"Impressive slaughter rates the last few weeks," he said. "For the most part we're processing more fed cattle than a year ago, just slightly more, but these plants have been able to ramp up daily production to almost full capacity and then putting in some Saturday kills as well to try to get into the backlog."

Perillat notes the market has been stabilizing.

"With the set-aside program last week coming into effect too, for the first time in a few weeks we saw our fed cattle market prop up a little bit. It's kind of stabilized here and as the week progressed we saw prices improve...Cows, we certainly haven't been processing as many cows, we've exported a few, but I think with grass conditions and such there hasn't been too much pressure there."

He says the question around demand will be key going forward.