Rain puts spring in our step

I HEARD of 40-60mm of rain around Ross and Oatlands this week and even more the further east you went.

The North West, North East and Northern Midlands had very good follow up rains which has put most in a good space going into winter.

Most of Victoria and NSW  have also had very good rain which has caused the cattle markets, up and down the Eastern seaboard, to jump quickly with some increases of 50c to 100c on many cattle.

This has been driven by restockers which in turn has put pressure on feeders and that has meant that butchers and processors have had to fight for their share.

Queensland markets have also caught on and at places like Roma (here they yard big numbers) feeder steers are making 500c to 550c and heifers 480c to 520c while lighter restocker cattle are nudging 600c.

Cows are making 380c to 440c/kg liveweight. Further south in both NSW and Victoria cattle prices continue to improve with store markets at levels not seen for many months.

Locally, producers have a spring in their step and are looking for both cattle and lambs to finish and make a few dollars.

They are very keen on store cows and on Tuesday at Powranna the best heavy beef cows made 330c to 362c but the highlight was the next run down that restockers bought for 300c to 342c and very lean 250c to 310c/kg.

These leaner D1 and D2 cows are very keenly sought after as there is an expectation that our prime cow price will catch the interstate prices at some stage during the winter.

In the lamb pens on Tuesday, we saw an extra store lamb buyer in the market plus the regular locals and they all wanted a share.

The best lambs going back to the paddock made $172 to $256 (most over $210), light $130 to $190 and very small $56 to $112/head.

Athough it is probably a once off with that particular interstate buyer in this saleyard, it should be noted that there has been big numbers of lambs being bought by interstate buyers both on the screen and out of the paddock over the last few months. One could assume that this will have an effect on numbers ready for the abattoirs during the winter and early spring. Time will tell.