Mainland buyers sweep up Tasmania's 'impressive' weaner cattle at Powranna

Nutrien Ag Solutions' Bridgewater livestock manager George Nichols said 63pc of the 4600-head yarding were headed to the mainland, "as far as Queensland".

"We had cattle booked to Goondiwindi, QLD, all up through NSW, back to the Riverina area," he said.

"We had really strong mainland support which is necessary when you have that many cattle in one sale day in Tassie."

He said volume buyers included Ian Morgan Livestock, Corcoran and Parker, and Duncan Brown who operated with several orders.

Light steers up to 200 kilograms had a 320 cents a kilogram average, with steers between 200-280kg averaged 288c/kg and steers above 280kg averaged 300c/kg.

Meanwhile, light heifers 200 and 280kg averaged 261c/kg, breeder heifers between 280-330kg made 311c/kg average, and heavy heifers above 330kg averaged 236c/kg.

Mr Nichols said the cattle at the sale were of "really, really impressive" quality, and a credit to the vendors and their genetics.

"We work pretty hard down here," he said.

"Generally, calves are a bit later which are lighter than mainland calves to it attracts those people to operate on them because it works out a bit cheaper.

"We had really good lines of well bred Angus cattle and Herefords as well."

He said TRT Pastoral were a volume vendor of the day, with a large run of 800 calves and 400 yearlings.

TRT Pastoral sold two bulls, 156kg, for $220 or 140c/kg, 125 steers across five pens, 195kg, for $700 or 358.97, and 129 steers across four pens, 411kg, for $1400 or 340.63c/kg.

The same vendor also sold 102 heifers across four pens, 195kg, for $520 or 266.67c/kg, 30 heifers, 155kg, for $400 or 258.06c/kg.

Kinloch Angus were awarded best-presented pen of steers and best-presented pen of heifers.

Kinloch Angus sold 21 steers, 340kg, for $1150 or 338c/kg, and 18 steers, 357kg, for $1150 or 321c/kg.

The same vendors also sold 27 heifers, 252.59kg, for $1100 or 435.48c/kg, 22 heifers, 284.55kg, for $1160 or 407.67c/kg, 18 heifers, 287kg, for $1160 or 403.87c/kg, 26 heifers, 289kg, for $1160 or 401c/kg and 18 heifers, 325kg, for $1160 or 356c/kg.

Nigel Campbell, Kinloch Angus, was retiring and it was his final year selling cattle at the feature sale.

"That was a special sale for him and he does a phenomenal job of breeding cattle, a really good example of well-bred Angus calves," Mr Nichols said.

He said there would be another weaner sale in a fortnight, with 3500-4000 cattle expected to be yarded, and another official sale in April.

"We're just cracking into it and it's good to have a pretty solid result," he said.

"What we're doing is a rain dance basically, if we could see rain through Tassie in the southern end and through the region I think we'd see a really big kick."

Greenlawn sold 22 steers, 263kg, for $860 or 326c/kg and 21 steers, 324kg, for $1080 or 333c/kg.

Connorville sold 20 heifers, 272kg, for $900 or 330c/kg, 20 heifers, 266kg, for $830 or 311c/kg, 20 heifers, 272kg, for $820 or 301c/kg and 22 heifers, 241kg, for $700 or 290c/kg.