Smaller pens suggest winter clean-up

Sales are getting smaller for sheep and beef.

Fielding Prime Sale

Lamb numbers at yesterday's Feilding Prime Sale were very similar to last week, but there were many more pens of smaller lines put up, which would suggest the winter clean-up is in full swing.

Buyer numbers were also similar with a couple of old faces replacing a couple of active recent buyers and, as usual, everything was sold, which is typical of a Monday sale.

The early stages of the sale moved along as per normal with most sale prices being right up to last week for the bigger lines of mostly heavier male lambs.

When the sale moved into the more medium-weight lambs like the prime ewe lambs, which are generally lighter and smaller than those heavy males, the sale dropped a cog and accelerated away with the sale prices for those lambs that would have hung up around 18-20kg appreciably lifting in price.

This also included those forward store lambs that many farms would kill but could arguably be improved further.

This shows that there is definitely an outlet for those heavy male lambs but the market still obviously prefers the medium-weight carcasses.

Top money yesterday was $159 for heavy males from RA Brown and H Nitschke with MD Collis selling a larger line for $158.

Well over half the yarding fitted into the medium-weight range with more and more vendors yarding those lambs rather than worksing them.

Twice as many ewes this week put pressure on the ewe sale prices and they noticeably dropped for all weight ranges. Scanning is bringing more out but even the odd pen of scanned in lamb ewes were not chased after hard although they were only lighter ewes, to be fair.

The males ranged from lightweight cull types to massively overfat wethers and sale prices also ranged widely.

There was not a lot of weight or quality offered in the cattle yards with any number of lighter store cattle sprinkled around the yards. This reflected in the prices for steers and heifers although one good Hereford heifer made $1445 ($2.78).

Cow numbers ebbed a little more and prices did struggle to stay up. The heavier and incalf cows were steady enough considering the lesser quality but the boners did ease back even for the better cows. Nearly all the cows were dairy cross, many being Angus/Friesian cross.

One very heavy service bull sold for $1703 ($1.67) but the other bulls had room for improvement.

Sheep (6673): lambs (4,823); heavy prime (1227), 50-60kg, $136-$159, $2.50-$2.75, firm; medium prime (2953), 42-50kg, $120-$138, $2.70-$2.90, lift; store (643), 28-40kg, $58-$122, $1.95-$3.10, steady; ewes (1,755); good, heavy (563), 26-34kg, $112-$139, $4.00-$4.30, ease; medium (967), 21-25kg, $78-$114.50, $3.70-$4.60, ease; lighter (225), 16-20kg, $57-$78, $3.60-$4.00, ease; 2ths (23), $81-$118; male sheep (72), $20-$145.

Cattle (137): steers (3), 240-480kg, $499-$1209, $2.08-$2.52; heifers (24); 180-520kg, $361-$1445, $2.08-$2.78, firm; lesser sorts, 130-387kg, $240-$716, $1.57-$1.85; cows (103); good, heavy, incalf, 470-624kg, $850-$1316, $1.81-$2.13, steady; boners, 417-566kg, $742-$1086, $1.60-$1.92, ease; lesser sorts, 372-410kg, $577-$640, $1.52-$1.62; bulls (7), 200-1020kg, $442-$1703, $1.67-$2.75.