THURSDAY’S Leongatha Store Sale was a spectacular success all around, following on from Tuesday’s excellent Prime Sale results, Sentinel-Times being welcomed to the saleyards by Leongatha VLE managing director Brian Paynter who declared, “The prices are red hot.”
“It would be $100 across the board, $200 in places,” Nutrien South Gippsland Livestock’s Brian McCormack said of the price rises since that agency’s last Store Sale a fortnight ago, adding there were some even bigger increases.
Feeder cattle were making into the low $5 a kilo range, calves fetching in the $5.30 to $5.60 and beyond bracket, Mr McCormack giving the example of 250 kilo cattle jumping up to 50 cents a kilo, which would equate to $125 a head increase.
A pen of 23 Angus steers from Mardan’s Dallas and Heather Campbell, weighing an average of 258 kilos, made an excellent $5.65 per kilo, Mr McCormack selling them for $1,460 a head, a pen of their slightly lighter steers fetching $5.45 a kilo.
“They’re impeccably bred cattle,” Mr McCormack said, noting the Campbell’s animals are renowned for their “good doing” and have mainly Innesdale bloodlines.
While Dallas would like to have got a little more weight on the cattle, he was unsurprisingly delighted with the prices achieved, Mr McCormack describing him as “over the moon”.
SEJ’s Jimmy Kyle sold a pen of 24 Angus steers, averaging 305 kilos, for $1730 a head, making $5.67 per kilo.
The heifer side of the sale also achieved tremendous prices, with Nutrien selling cattle from a business trading as High Voltage, weighing an average of 413 kilos, for $1,990 a head at $4.81 per kilo.
A pen of lighter heifer calves from Debbie Kroger of Main Ridge made $5.02 a kilo, weighing an average of 235 kilos and attracting $1,180 a head.
Sentinel-Times saw Nutrien’s Jack Ginnane sell a pen of 18 Angus heifers from Leongatha South’s N & A Botha for $1,990 each, the animals weighing an average 439 kilos, equating to $4.53 a kilo.
As with all other categories, coloured cattle performed strongly on Thursday, Mr McCormack saying those with some Euro in their breeding were appealing to domestic fatteners, Euros being Limousin, Charolais and Simmental.
Nambrok’s Willdarben Farm achieved $5.39 a head for a pen of 14 Black Baldy steers, weighing 486 kilos on average and making $2,620 a head.
Boolarra’s N Kreun & G Busuttil sold a pen of 9 Hereford Red Angus cross steers through Nutrien, making $5.54 per kilo, the animals weighing an average of 249 kilos and selling for $1,380 a head.
Mr McCormack thinks the excellent prices flowed on from a lack of numbers in Tuesday’s fat sale, as people look to stock up.
He observed that while the market is still very much feeder driven, the number of cattle going back out on grass is rising, accounting for perhaps 25 percent of those sold on Thursday as opposed to somewhere around 10 percent recently.
“There was a bit more competition from East Gippsland today,” he said, saying buyers from Sale, Heyfield and Bairnsdale were all active, and that overall cattle numbers weren’t that high.
Mr McCormack expects the market to rise a bit more yet due to limited cattle numbers, saying it’s a matter of supply and demand.
