Saturday, March 30, 2024

ACROSS THE RAILS: Masterton locals compete for ewes

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Next to Australia, New Zealand has looked a bit like the depressed cousin of the sheep world lately. They’ve been eagerly jumping back on track following drought and bushfires, whereas NZ farmers have taken the past year as a cue to further cut back sheep numbers.
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However, Masterton’s annual ewe fairs have shown that there are pockets of keen sheep farmers for the long haul.

A bit of ongoing upgrade work in the back of the yards meant the usual single-day event was split into two, with Day 1 – the two-tooth to four-year sale – an early contender for the ewe fair of the year award. Like a lot of other yards, tallies were well down on what came in last year. As a result, it was always going to be easier to squeeze out bids compared to last year, but even still the market exceeded expectations by $20-plus.

Arguably the strongest selling pen was the opening line – almost 400 commercial capital stock Romney two-tooths from Greentops, which were only on the market due the farm being sold back into farming. Bidding started in the low $200s, but several interested parties kept these climbing until the market tapped out at $258. These were only bettered by a smaller line of purebred Romney’s at $262.

It was all fireworks through the rest of the sale, too. Of the 4400 two-tooth to six-tooth ewes, 21 of the 23 pens went on to make $216 or more, half making $240 plus. An average of $235 was paid for ewes in this age range. 

Part of the feel-good factor was the mix of buyers – almost exclusively locals supporting locals. The Wairarapa was knocked around as hard as the rest of the North Island in last year’s drought, and a lot of those who had to cut back ewe or hogget numbers to make it through were out to top numbers back up to where they’d usually be. It was almost that this was the first sale back at the Masterton yards too, having been out of action for upwards of six months.

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