Quality lambs to maintain prices

AS is usual for this time of the year, we all have a crack at trying to predict where livestock prices will head over the next six months. 

I happen to believe that good quality lambs over 26 kg will be hard enough to find and so maintain very good prices while secondary types although cheaper will hold up with good MK orders competing with restockers. 

One could make an assumption that mutton numbers for sale will be lower than 12 months ago and so would be expected to hold or even gain heading into the late autumn/ early winter. 

I think that was the easy one. Looking forward on the cattle front is more complex with big numbers expected on the kill floor during the first quarter of 2025 and then after that the seasons in Eastern Australia will play a major part. 

Prices in the prime markets have been slightly disappointing since Christmas with over supply getting the blame but most commentators are suggesting that if the seasons are reasonable there will be a shortage leading into the second quarter of the year. 

Locally here in Tassie, I don’t think there is any doubt that we will be short of cattle by March/ April and this is mainly based on the huge number of weaner cattle that left our shores this time last year. 

So to follow this through, when this shortage happens cattle will be brought in for interstate and so the price over there will govern what sort of price we get here. 

This of course will be season related and remembering that much of Victoria is already in trouble as far as water and feed is concerned. 

Interesting to note that over the last few weeks there have been significant numbers of weaners being bought in from Victoria and South East South Australia. 

Our weaner sales start here on Thursday 27th and run for about six weeks and this is always an exciting time of the year because this is when we see how well-bred our Tasmanian cattle really are.