It's a waiting game for many store sales including Hamilton, as high anticipation of larger yarding numbers in upcoming store sales is keeping prices in a holding pattern.
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Agents yarded just over 1200 cattle at the Hamilton Regional Livestock Exchange November store sale on Thursday.
The sale had all types of cattle achieve solid sales all around, albeit at slightly cheaper or similar prices than previous months.
LME Livestock and Land's Bernie Grant said agents were pleased with the day's sales with feature lines particularly selling well.
"Grown steers heavy steers our sort of 490 - 540 cents per kilogram which was still pretty good," he said.
"Our spring drops did well here, which had a fair bit of weight in some of them while a couple of feature lines sold really well too."
Weaner steers got as expensive as $744c/kg while bulkier spring drop steers sold between 610-690c/kg.
Grown heifers held between a range of 490-520c/kg , although some lots of grown heifers got as high as 606c/kg.
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Weaner heifers also broke through 700c/kg regularly, with lighter weaner heifers getting up to 730c/kg.
Mr Grant said lighter cattle kept to demand and while prices were not showing huge movement, there is anticipation for what will be on offer at Hamilton towards the end of the year.
"If you talk to the feedlotters, prices are coming back a bit but there'll be a lot of cattle hitting the market in the next month or two," he said.
"Cattle are starting to come out of the north... so I don't think there's the huge urgency around to keep the prices as high as they have been, but, if they float around these rates, it'll still be good."
Mr Grant said wet weather had meant there were a few issues getting cattle of the saleyards, but overall the region was finding itself in a "pretty lucky situration" with the region drying out quickly in the last fortnight.
"If we had our store sale two or three weeks ago, we might not have got as many stock here so it certainly has been an issue but not certainly to the extent of what's happening north of here," he said.
Along with major feedlotters, local grass backgrounders also bought up their fare share of cattle to send back out to the paddock.
E J Hiscock sold 13 Angus steers, 540kg for 485c/kg or $2619 a head.
G Nolte sold 11 Angus steers, 453kg, for 540c/kg or $2446 a head and another pen of 26 Angus heifers, 487kg, for 503c/kg or $2449.
Cherrymount Partnership sold 19 Hereford steers, 456kg, for 520c/kg or $2371.
NR & RS Langley sold 21 Poll Hereford steers, 554kg for 486c/kg or $2692.
Kelso Pastoral sold 52 Angus steers, 449kg, for 572c/kg or $2568 and another pen of 44 Angus steers, 495kg for 598c/kg or $2960.
J E Earl sold 42 Angus steers, 285kg for 620c/kg or $2387 and another 20 Angus heifers, 315kg for 702c/kg or $2211.
Neville Nolte sold 30 Angus heifers, 382kg, for 606c/kg or $2314.
