The Australia Day public holiday next Monday affects Pakenham, Ballarat and Mortlake, among other markets in New South Wales and South Australia.
Given the intensity of heat this summer, it was surprising to see most of these market offer reduced numbers of cattle this week.
However, after the price falls of the previous week, it is easy to understand producers’ sentiments, which created the weaker supply.
Having said this, the damage was already done, as processors have been saying they have more than enough supply at the moment.
While processor competition was at all markets, demand was softer, and prices took further falls this week, some of them quite heavily.
With demand as weak as it is, prices for nearly all cattle have fallen, but none worse than cows.
It was not uncommon to see cow prices, quoted in Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) market reports, being anywhere between 7-30 cents a kilogram cheaper.
The real rot set in the previous Tuesday at Shepparton, where a much larger offering of over 800 cows were quoted 20-33c/kg cheaper.
From there on, most other markets have been playing catch up with Shepparton.
The indicator price for cow beef, in carcase weight price terms last week, was 389c/kg.
And with the 90CL price for the United States grinding beef market quoted at a tick over 611c/kg FAS by MLA last week, why are cows selling so poorly?
There is a huge margin between these two figures, of 222c/kg cwt, and this is based on all cows, not the very lean cows best suiting the US market.
No processor will ever let on what margin they need to cover costs, but it is fair to say, that for many of these poor lean cows, that suit the US market, hide values are almost non existent.
With poor meat yields off these cows, and no hide price, this could add a fairly big cost to production to processors.
Few better quality cows have sold over 200c/kg this week.
The top price has been 220c/kg, and the base prices have fallen to below 100c/kg again.
Grown steer and bullock prices have dropped another 10c/kg, with most sales recorded of C3 and C4 bullocks being between 245-280c/kg.
Prices for trade cattle have been fairly poor with only a small portion of the best quality selling firm to a little easier.
However, there has been a late rally at Barnawartha with prime vealers selling to dearer trends; this put the top price at 300c/kg.
Last week at Warragul on Wednesday, vealers sold to 315c/kg.
