THE only thing they didn’t sell at Wednesday’s Kyneton store cattle sale was a Brahman.
Barely 600 cattle were spread across more than 100 pens and they came in every size and colour – from black to white, to black and white, red, red and white, horned, polled, steers, heifers, cows, calves and dairy crosses.
So it was not surprising that a single PTIC cow topped the sale at $2320, followed closely by a cow and calf unit at $2120.
The early pens of Angus sold quickly, to a high of $1600 for 535kg steers with the top heifers reaching $1300. Elders auctioneer Dean Coxon said the cattle were a little cheaper than the previous sale mostly because the quality just wasn’t there.
He said the sale would normally yard between 800 and 1000. “We didn’t have the numbers of the well bred steers we would have liked and in the end the heifers did almost as well as the steers,” Mr Coxon said.
“And a lot of people are still trying to keep cattle in their paddocks, partly to use the feed they have and mostly because they are trying to build up herd numbers.” Most of the cattle sold on the day stayed in the district with feedlotters also taking their share of the catalogue.
“We even had Friesian cross heifers do well,” Mr Coxon added. Most of the females offered were unjoined, several vendors having been burnt last year when putting up PTIC pens and then missing out on the stronger prices this year. Lindsay McPherson, Ravenswood, put up nine heifer vealers and 13 steers, the last of his cattle – for good. He said he has been taking advantage of the strong prices to sell right out of cattle in his mixed farm enterprise.
“We are going to focus a lot more on our sheep as a wool and fat lamb business and the beef prices were enough to convince me now was as good a time as ever to destock,” Lindsay said.
Landmark Dwyer also had a good day out with its smaller share of the small catalogue. They sold 464kg steers to $1520; a line of 14 Angus steers, 360kg, for $1330 and 11 Charolais averaging 328kg at $1200. In heifers 14 Angus at 488kg sold for $1270, and two lines of Angus from the same vendor – 21 at 374kg and 17 at 340kg – managed $1220.