The wheel has come full circle on old season store lambs and, as they age up to hoggets, a reflection on the year’s results has put the smile back on farmer’s faces.
This season has been the most successful to date nationwide and even as the last of the old season lambs traipse through the yards the market is still firing.
Feilding is the biggest selling centre for store lambs and the 2020-2021 Feilding store lamb market started off similar to results from the three years prior. The market then sat in a pattern of following closely to the stronger years of 2018 and 2019 until June, when the 2021 market took on a life of its own.
Volume started to waver and as schedules rose so too did the competition in the pens, which eventually pushed prices to record June levels. But come early July the cat was really set amongst the pigeons when a $10/kgCW contract was announced by one processing company and while the spot market never caught up to that, it has come closer than many expected.
Currently, lamb schedule pricing is at $9.15-$9.60/kgCW in the North Island and $9.20-$9.55/kgCW in the South. Prices did settle again for the remainder of the season, yet still tracked along at levels far superior to any other year.
September 2021 monthly averages at Feilding for 32-34kg and 35-37kg male lambs were $4.70/kgLW and $4.65/kgLW respectively, with ewe lambs making a slight premium at $4.78/kgLW and $4.67/kgLW, largely due to line sizes and a better type of lamb offered.
While this data specifically focuses on the Feilding store lamb market it was echoed at other yards covered by AgriHQ, and the icing on the cake for this last week of September was the strength shown for fine-wool and fine-wool cross lines at Temuka.
The season was not without a few bumps in the road as weather conditions slowed the market in places, but it was quick to rebound and as bigger margins were made on finished lambs buyers came to the rails with more budget and confidence, and the story wrote itself from there.
It has been quite the ride for the store lamb market this season, and it is a breath of fresh air to have a consistently positive year of pricing under the belt.
