Sheep and lamb prices fall as numbers decrease and quality falls

IN Victoria, numbers have progressively fallen and this week at Bendigo there were only 9,510 lambs and 3,170 mutton, at Ballarat on Tuesday 19,210 lambs and 9,370 mutton, at Horsham 3,050 lambs and 950 mutton and at Hamilton 6,500 lambs and 3,500 mutton.

Most of the mutton numbers almost halved this week and apart from Ballarat lamb numbers came back significantly.

Slaughter figures for the past couple of weeks have also come back but the long week-end would have accounted for some of that.

The word from the big exporters is that the number of heavy and extra heavy lambs is becoming scarce and now it will be a matter of whether they pay more or cut their kill numbers until there is more supply.

The other thing that will happen in the big plants is that over the next month or six weeks each will close for at least a week for maintenance (this is quite normal each year).

Some years we have seen maintenance breaks extend to 10 days or a fortnight if the numbers aren’t about.

It will all depend on how high prices can get and still be profitable.

I think from what I hear that there is still a little way to go before we see much resistance.

At Ballarat this week heavy and extra heavy lambs gained another $5 to $10/head with extra heavy pens making $229 to $280, heavy $194 to $242 and heavy trade $163 to $215.

Most averages working out between 720c and 780c/kg carcass weight.

There are very neat trade lambs making over 800c/kg but these are few and far between.

Restockers were also strong in this market as they competed with the exporters looking for MK lambs.

At Powranna on Tuesday we had 1,350 lambs and quality was better than the last few weeks and the market was strong with extra heavy pens making $196 to $204, heavy $178 to $185, trade $145 to $166, light trade $90 to $105 and light MK lambs $52 to $62/head.

There were only 499 mutton but the market was very strong with extra heavy sheep making $78 to $86, heavy $74 to $88, medium $52 to $83, light $54 to $68 and very light $18 to $24/head.

At Ballarat the mutton prices eased $4 to $8/head but still pretty good with heavy crossbreds making $73 to $118 and medium weights $57 to $82 which is not much more than our market.

It will be interesting to see how many sheep come to the market over the next couple of months.

I imagine that most scanned empty ewes will be sold asap and in some dry areas there will be a wether culling as well.