If there was ever a reason to believe that cattle and lamb prices were going to ease with the arrival of autumn then this is not the year to hold strongly to those thoughts.
This is the view I’ve formed after having witnessed the monthly store cattle market at Warrnambool and parts of the Ballarat lamb sale this week.
Both markets saw exceptional demand, with southwest restockers hungry for cattle at Warrnambool, and processors anxious for lambs at Ballarat.
As cattle prices are concerned all thoughts that the peak in selling rates may have passed can be dismissed.
Many might have thought that the excellent prices of 350-400c/kg for young steers achieved through the heights of the January weaner sales might never have been seen again. But those prices have begun to re-emerge as selling evolves into the more sparsely populated monthly markets.
Throughout the southwest most producers seem comfortable that an autumn break has been achieved after a useful February rain and a couple more solid falls during March. Pastures have a green tinge among a thick cover of dried grass and this has encouraged restockers from Colac to Mt Gambier to participate at prices once thought too extreme.
Prices also in prime markets, which has seen the benchmark, EYCI, climb almost nine per cent through March – notoriously one of the most difficult trading months of the year, now provides the necessary cashflow for viable change over even though outlays are increasing and the margins thought to be decreasing.
If there is a saving grace for the struggling processor sector it is that during the whole of the southern weaner series few escaped the net of the greater southern supply zone and must be still here to be sold.
Likewise in the lamb market, and although at four southern processing plants have been shuttered to date, lamb prices continue to escalate also climbing 10pc through March.
Oddly enough, and while the optimum period for supplying the export Easter deliveries has now passed, supplies and prices continue to rise whereby rates of 640-700c/kg this week were common place even though supplies were 20pc greater than last week.
The Ballarat market, in particular, was a classic. It offered a greater number of 31,000 lambs (6200 more), with prices and quality viewed as being among the best ever seen.
TB White and Sons principal Gerard White, who quoted his sale of 12,000 lambs as $3-$6 a head dearer said the trade is now paying dollar values that exporters said were too high a month ago. The amount of pens he sold for $200 or better was both extraordinary and testament to the quality of the Ballarat yarding as a whole.