"Farmers are enjoying the saleyard and are still making $10 to $15 a head more than they would be sending them to the works and that's even after paying all the charges. The schedules have nudged up by around 20 cents a kilo dead weight, but that nowhere near matches the sale price."
Mr Cotton said the lift was all down to grass growth and even Hawke's Bay has enjoyed the rain.
"There was a bit of a blip at the Feilding sale last Friday, though. The 15,000 store lambs on offer proved too many for buyers in one day and they only averaged $2.64/kg compared with the $2.90/kg at Stortford.
"Before the rain and grass growth there was reportedly somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 lambs sent down south. Now the grass has arrived and farmers want lambs onboard they really do need to front up and buy them," Mr Cotton said.
Meanwhile, mutton also remains strong at $3.40/kg.
Wool, however, is yet again being reduced to a byproduct.
"I stopped in for a chat and a coffee with one of my farmer clients the other day and he commented how lucky I was to be having a chocolate biscuit with it.
"He showed me a copy of his shearing contractor's account for shearing his ewes - it was $30,000. Then he showed me the credit note from his wool buyer - $25,000.
"He told me he had had better days than having to pay $5000 to have his ewes shorn after having to dag them first himself and then pay for all the other incidentals like wool fadges."
But he also had good news on the cattle front after the first of the weaners sold as strongly as expected.
"The weaners were fetching $600-$800, so that's not a bad option to take them through. Overall I think the livestock markets will remain solid for the next month at least now there's a bit of feed around," Mr Cotton said.
