Rainfall brings smiles at last

AMAZING the difference some rain makes. 

These recent rains have put some big smiles on farmer’s faces and have put a bit confidence into the cattle markets. 

Most of the north of the state ended up with between 50 and 100mm and in some cases more while the Central Midlands and Southern areas got more in the 20 to 50mm range. 

Interstate there were also good rains with more to come which will suddenly change the over supply of cattle lining up at the abattoir door. 

At Wagga on Monday most classes of cattle improved 10-20c/kg while at Powranna on Tuesday we saw prices improve 30c to 50c/kg with yearling steers making 278c to 312c and heifers 250c to 332c while grown steers and bullocks improved 40c with most making 280c to 340c/kg liveweight. 

The lamb show continues to roll on with lamb prices sitting at record levels for this time of the year with a definite shortage of heavy trade and heavy export lambs throughout Eastern Australia. 

We had a good day at Powranna on Tuesday with a total of 4,381 sheep and lambs with a very good line-up of new seasons lambs that sold to very strong local and interstate competition ending up with averages $20 to $25 higher than last week. 

Heavy lambs made $190 to $240, trade $188 to $202 and light trade $136 to $188/head. 

At Hamilton in Western Victoria they have now gone to a two day lamb sale (Monday and Wednesday) and this week they have yarded 66,000 lambs and this combines with 16,000 at Bendigo on Monday and 31,000 at Ballarat on Tuesday for a total of 113,000 lambs for that part of Victoria. 

The numbers didn’t dampen competition with most fully firm to $15 dearer and at Hamilton on Wednesday the quotes were between 850c and 990c/kg carcass weight with heavy lambs making $217 to $268 (a top of $310), trade $138 to $217 and lighter in a big range of $60 to $166/head. 

Even though there are big numbers of lambs coming forward there is not a lot of very heavy pens and in some markets well over 50% are less than 20kg and this fact in itself is keeping price pressure on the lambs over 24 kg. 

There is usually a little bit of correction moving into Christmas with some works likely to take a few extra days off over the Christmas/New Year period purely because of the day of the week that Christmas falls this year. 

With these lamb prices as they sit, it has certainly given restockers some confidence going forward with many light trade weight lambs making $120 to $150/head and even the very small (I mean small) at Powranna made $32 to $64/head and the next run up $84 to $92/head.