Market Talk - Cattle prices staying on the upward trend

Some regions are shaping up very well, while much of the south of the state is still in desperate need of rain. Last weekend and early this week, much of the North West, North East and Northern Midlands received 30 to 50 mm, while further South it was more in the 5 to 10mm range.

Last week, agents yarded 2,752 store cattle at Powranna, which is a big number for a Tassie sale.

To put it in perspective, on the same day at Mortlake (Western Victoria), they only yarded 2,200 head.

There were many well-bred lines of mainly yearling cattle but there were also numbers of secondary and crossbred types.

The best quality steers improved a few cents while the seconds were a little cheaper and that trend followed through to the heifers.

Heavy yearling steers (400 + kg) made $1,900 to $2,460, medium (330-400 kg) $1,320 to $2,100, light (200-330 kg) $1,120 to $1,800 and very small (under 200 kg) made $600 to $1,260/head.

Most medium and light steers averaged between 530c and 550c while very small averaged 600c but nudged 700c on lines of Angus steers.

As we can see there were very few steers sold under $1,000. Heavy heifers made $1,660 to $2,080, medium $1,400 to $1,780, light $840 to $1,700 and very small $600 to $1,020.

Most averages sitting between 440c and 460c/kg liveweight.

There was no interstate competition but there were some cattle bought to go to Flinders Island with most buyers from the North West, North East and Northern Midlands.

Cattle prices through most saleyards both here and interstate continue to push higher and locally over-the-hooks prices for program cattle continue to improve almost weekly which is giving producers and finishers a very good return at the moment and hence the ability and desire to buy store cattle to eat the expected spring grass.

While still on cattle how is this for a bull sale.

The Millah Murrah Angus bull sale at Bathurst in NSW sold 124 bulls (total clearance) for an average of $34,145/head.

On the lamb front numbers are low in interstate yards for this time of the year with still small numbers of new season lambs coming forward and this is seen in the fact that lamb slaughter levels are 14 per cent lower than the same time last year.

Lamb markets over the last couple of weeks have become eratic as the quality of old lambs drops, but all in all prices are at very good levels with the Eastern States trade lamb indicator sitting at 1,147c/kg and heavy 1,160c/ kg carcass weight.

At Bendigo on Monday there were only 9,900 lambs penned which is very low for this time of the year and no doubt these numbers will improve over the next few weeks but the real question is how many will be heavy enough to kill and how many will go back to the paddock.

On that subject, at Bendigo on Monday store buyers paid $180 to $220 for the best and $125 to $185 for small new season lambs.

This in itself will encourage producers in dry areas to sell lambs at light weights rather than keep and hope.

Locally this may very well happen with southern producers keen to sell early rather than gamble on rains that may or may not come.