Market talk - Lamb back on the market

After last week’s record breaking lamb prices, most major saleyards saw a slightly easier trend this week with most averages slipping under 1,000c/kg carcass weight.

Still great money from a producer point of view, although I doubt that the processors would agree.

The Bendigo market on Monday started the week on a cheaper trend but when we got to Ballarat on Tuesday and Hamilton and Horsham on Wednesday prices had recovered a little to sit between 950c and $1,050c/kg. 

Numbers were lower in all yards apart from Bendigo with Ballarat being the biggest number at 21,364 head. 

Extra heavy lambs at this centre made $322 to $370, heavy (26-30 kg) $263 to $332, trade (22-26 kg) $210 to $308 and lambs in the 18-22 kg range made $170 to $250/head working out between 850c and 1000c/kg which is a big range and shows that second quality lambs are being discounted.

Locally at Powranna, we saw a stronger market with an extra couple of Victorian buyers on the rail and other orders looking on.

It is interesting to note that the supply of heavy lambs in Eastern Australia is running about 26% down on this time last year while the overall numbers through the saleyards is up 2% which is a direct reflection of the very dry seasons though much of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. 

There have been examples of lambs only a few weeks old being sold because of the season and luckily for those producers prices have been very good. 

Last week there was a line of 740 Poll Dorset/Merino lambs from Cootamundra, NSW born between March 10 and  28 sold for $142/head on Auctions Plus and they weighed between 18 & 27 kg to average 21 kg liveweight. 

I imagine that this result will get some producers thinking who are in those very dry areas of Northern Victoria and Southern NSW.

Mutton markets continued to track between 600 and 650c/kg and at Powranna on Tuesday we saw extra heavy sheep make $196 to $220, heavy $188 to $230, medium $126 to $178, light $100 to $144 and very light $24 to $118/head.

The Powranna monthly store cattle sale is on next Thursday with an 11 am start and expecting around 1,500 cattle between the three agents.

Another great opportunity if you are looking for cattle to take through the winter.