Wet conditions drive heavy hoggets to weekly market

Feeling a bit sheepish, a ewe relaxes with her lamb.

There seem to be two constants to this weekly Feilding prime sale recently - the weather will be terrible and there will be a big yarding of massive hoggets.

With hogget numbers approaching 6000 and over 80 per cent of them being heavy hoggets, and the threat of more rain in the air, both of those constants were in place yesterday.

Selling agents were apprehensive about the difficulty of selling so many heavy hoggets.

They did sell them all but sale prices definitely eased for the heavy hoggets, with the medium weight hoggets - although still off recent highs - not changing a great deal.

It is obvious that the time and feed spent getting hoggets up to heavy weights is not being rewarded with hoggets much lighter selling for only a few dollars less in many cases.

The major buyers are able to give each some elbow space in such a large yarding and are buying to dollar levels, locking in a margin without cutting each other's throats.

Very heavy male hoggets still sold over $180, with Rowenda Farms selling 21 heavy ram hoggets for $187 to top the market.

Some big lines of ewe hoggets sold around $160 but the pens that looked "well sold" were invariably in the 19-21kg carcase range albeit not at the peak prices of a month ago.

A lot more ewes arrived for this sale this week with more wet-dries in but the buyers were here and ewe sale prices again firmed a little without any major changes.

There remains a good level of enquiry for ewes with one pen of walking sausages selling for $144.50 today.

The cattle sale was again a big contrast to the sheep sale with hardly any offered.

No prime cattle were put forward with the only beef cattle being a pen of 5 cull Angus cows selling for $1165 ($2.15).

The cows and heifers sold were in reasonable order for dairies and sale prices were firm to lifting.

The bulls were store bulls and made similar money to what they would have made on Friday.

Sheep (7075): hoggets (5867); heavy prime (4261), 51-68kg, $148-$187, $2.75-$3.00, ease; medium prime (865), 42-50kg, $131-$155, $3.00-$3.30, slight ease; store (741), 27-40kg, $60-$143, $2.30-$3.60, steady; ewes (1,203); good, heavy (411), 26-30kg, $126-$144.50, $4.80-$5.00, firm; medium (604), 21-25kg, $89-$125, $4.30-$5.00, firm; lighter (73), 16-20kg, $66-$85, $4.20, firm; 2ths and fresh 4ths (115), $88.50-$108; male sheep (5), $55-$121.

Cattle (37): heifers (7), 415-620kg, $979-$1612, $2.36-$2.60, firm; cows (27); good, heavy, 480-630kg, $960-$1297, $1.95-$2.56, lift; boners, 400-470kg, $640-$914, $1.60-$2.00, firm; bulls (3), 485-490kg, $1274-$1401, $2.60-$2.89.