Australia-Cattle trade.

AUSTRALIA-CATTLE MARKETS.Victoria weekly cattle summary

Numbers down

Quality continues to determine market trends, particularly as the changing season affects the way cattle present for sale. After very good falls of rain over a large area, markets in the north and west of the state were smaller with only Gippsland sales, and Colac recording similar or larger supply. This gave lot feeders and restockers a good opportunity to purchase store condition cattle. Both were very active and this resulted in some good prices paid for the quality purchased. Feedlots were purchasing a large range of weights which has put a floor into some markets.

There have been a number of very good quality vealers and yearlings sold, which was a reason behind some the dearer price trends. The EYCI over the past few weeks has been rather steady and at the completion of Thursday’s markets was 316.25¢, which was down 1.25¢/kg cwt on last week.

However, export cattle received some of the largest gains as increased competition and stronger demand for grown steers and cows returned higher prices to producers. Cow prices realised the greatest changes after a couple of weeks of declining prices. Stronger demand from Japan, and a higher buy in price from the US for lean grinding beef resulted in some reasonable to large shift in prices. Bulls have also sold to better demand.

At the conclusion of Thursday markets, Victorian cattle indicators were generally dearer on last week. Vealer steers improved 10¢ – to 186¢ whilst heifers finished 3¢/kg dearer. Yearlings held firm with steers on 182¢ whilst bullocks lifted 8¢ – to 170¢/kg. Cows improved 6¢ – to 126¢/kg.

Prices improve

Processors were certainly prepared to pay for well bred cattle and this was evident in prices for the best quality vealers and supplementary fed yearlings. Gippsland continues to offer some high yielding cattle as Bairnsdale and Pakenham had many B muscle vealers making from 190¢ to 237¢/kg. The supplementary fed cattle made to 231¢/kg. Lot feeders competed fully with trade buyers and most C muscle cattle made between 155¢ and 190¢/kg.

There was extra competition from an interstate processor in Gippsland assisting in the higher price trends for grown cattle. Many better quality C muscle steers sold from 155¢ to 180¢/kg.

It was not that long ago when processors had at least a weeks cow supply available to them. However, after the rain supply was reduced and prices regained a lot of the falls over the previous two weeks. The larger increases of 8¢ to 20/c/kg were for the lean, and at times lightweight cows, as the other cows were 3¢ to 12¢/kg dearer. Better quality beef cows made from 120¢ to 145¢/kg, while most others made from 75¢ to 123¢/kg. The carcass weight price across all cows was 253¢ which was 9¢/kg higher.