Market Talk - Livestock heats as winter cools

Winter is definitely in full swing and in general the state has received some very good rains over the last fortnight and although parts of the South of the state are still need more while the majority of the North is starting to get wet and creeks are running and dams are starting to fill.

The last week has also seen some very good frosts which will steady any growth in the short term.

From now on we start to see longer days and we will start to see pasture growth fairly soon.

There have also been some good rains in South Australia, Western Victoria and Southern NSW which will put even more pressure on stock numbers and in turn prices.

On Monday at the major Southern cattle sales at Wagga and Mortlake we saw a big jump in cow prices of 30c to 50c with big numbers of heavy cows making between 400c and 440c and even the leaner types making 340c to 400c/kg liveweight.

Locally at Powranna we didn’t have any really good heavy cows but the market improved 40c to 50c with the best making 352c to 390c while leaner made 280c to 375c and very lean 120c to 265c.

It is a fair while since we have cow prices at this level and I heard an agent in a Queensland market saying they had never seen cows at this price levels.

Cattle prices right up and down the East coast continue to improve weekly as numbers start to get very tight.

Lamb and mutton prices continue to maintain very strong values and in the case of mutton prices are even improving further.

Numbers have dropped off in most yards with Bendigo, Ballarat, Hamilton and Horsham in Victoria pretty small all over and at Dubbo on Monday there were 22,000 which was 13,000 less.

Most old season lambs are averaging between 1,150c and 1,250c/kg carcass weight.

Dubbo was the only yard on Monday that had a few new seasons lambs and the trade weights made $275 to $311 (av. 1,220c/kg) with a $5 skin.

We will see more new lambs over the next few weeks at the early areas like Bendigo, Shepparton, Dubbo and Wagga and it will be interesting to see what the numbers are like in the early Spring!

Australian lamb export value exceeded $A4 billion for the first time over a 12 month period (June 2024-end of May 2025).

We saw big volumes sold into the U.S., Middle East, China and other Southeast Asian countries like Papua New Guinea and Malaysia.

There is a big span of 91 countries that we send lamb to and there are some good growth areas in the smaller markets like the UK up 44%, Saudi Arabia up 25%. Malaysia up 13% and Canada up 11%.

This big spread of overseas customers is very good for the industry going forward and certainly reduces risk! The mutton prices are also at all time highs (or around the 2020 levels) with most prices double where they were 12 months ago with many saleyard averages sitting around 700c/kg carcass weight.