Sale yards around the country are filling up with livestock as farmers prepare for winter, but extra throughput is being added due to several unforeseen circumstances and that has made for a busy week.
Not a singular sale yard was the focus either, as several offered up larger than usual tallies for varying reasons.
Waikato and South Auckland regions have been declared to be in a drought, which is a very worrying situation to be in anytime, but least of all heading into winter, and any extra mouths on-farm are heading out the gate.
That has meant an increase in lesser-type cattle heading to local yards and though these are heavily discounted buyers are meeting the market. Supplementary feed is flowing into the region in great quantities from areas that had a better than average growth season, but that feed will be earmarked for capital stock and shorter time-frame cattle.
The cancellation of a live-export shipment of dairy-beef heifers has meant that 12,000-head now need to find homes within the shores.
Some sale yards played host to several of these, including 500 Hereford-Friesian and Angus-Friesian at Taupō, which were offered in unit-load lots at the conclusion of the monthly sale.
Cull dairy cow volume is always high at this time of year but has been exaggerated as dairy cows and heifers find themselves on trucks bound for the yards rather than directly to the processors as long wait times still impact on the ability to offload.
At Temuka ,supply lifted to 900, the highest tally since 2017, but despite the influx added competition from buyers looking for grazing cows meant the market held.
Masterton rounded out the in-calf beef cow season with a 750-head yarding and PGG Wrightson regional livestock manager Steve Wilkinson said throughput was up on recent years for several reasons
“While it was great to offer such a high quality yarding in good volume to buyers we hope that we wouldn’t see anything like it again in the next 10 years, as farm sales to forestry have pushed some of these cattle in, including 250 capital stock Hereford from Martinborough.”
Wilkinson said the sale exceeded expectations and while the older end of the cow market was underpinned by processors very few headed in that direction, with the majority set to be calved down.
Feilding also finally finished the weaner fair season with a yarding of over 2000, mainly out of the later country around Taihape.
Tallies were higher than usual due to big offloads from a handful of properties.
In contrast, store lamb tallies are normal for the time of year as volume starts to lift in preparation for winter.
Temperatures around the country have been relatively mild to date – both day and night – but the first real cold snap is about to creep up the country and will likely indicate that winter is setting in.
Temuka offered up nearly 9000 recently and Feilding and Stortford Lodge continue to pen consistent week-on-week throughput of 12,000-16,000 and 7000-8000 respectively.
Matawhero tallies were up to 5000-head at a recent sale.
This article was written by AgriHQ analyst Suz Bremner. Suz leads the AgriHQ LivestockEye team, including data collectors who are tasked with being on the ground at sale yards throughout the country. Read more about the yards AgriHQ covers in their LivestockEye reports here.
