Livestock market report – January 18, 2018

WITH the recent burst of hot weather helping to get the grain harvest completed, the pasture in the paddock has dried off with supplementary feeding now underway on most farms.

This has finally triggered some large hay movements enabling farmers to offload last season’s rolls that have been slowly deteriorating in outside storage areas.

Large numbers of rolls have been leaving the Freshwater Creek area to the Western District and to the north of Geelong for $22 in the paddock, with some of this season’s hay starting to budge at $35 to $45 per roll. Lucerne is still in high demand with local reserves of this high-protein hay all but gone.

There were 35,000 lambs yarded at Ballarat Tuesday, with shorn lambs featuring widely.

Market Highlights Ballarat Sheep & Cattle:
Heavy shorn lambs to $230
Trade shorn lamb to $175
Light lambs to $130
Mutton $5 to $10 per head easier
Light yearling calves to 20 cents dearer
Yearling heifers to 265 cents
Yearling steers to 275 cents
Quality heifer vealers to 244 cents
Quality steer vealers to 278 cents
Cows to 233 cents

Ballarat Cattle
This week’s yarding of 342 head of cattle at Ballarat saw an increase of 168 head on last sale. There were not a lot of vealers penned, but an increase in yearlings and cow numbers tripled with the yarding consisting of 111 steers, 85 heifers, 124 cows and 19 bulls, while all the regular processors and feeder orders were in place and active.

Steer vealers, while not in numbers, held firm on last sale, while the heifer portion saw dearer trends of up to 30 cents per kilogram due to quality.

A rise in quality also saw light yearling steers sell to dearer trends, while medium weight steers saw good rises of 15 to 20 cents per kilogram.

Heifers fared much the same with heavy weights 10 to 15 cents per kilogram dearer.

Grown steers showed dearer trends of 4 cents and heifers were also dearer while restockers were active on various lines of light cows.

Processor cows showed weight and quality, although there were some cows carrying extra fat cover; the better types showed dearer trends.