A specially calendared Grown Cattle Fair brought out the cattle and the buyers with nearly 650 of the bovine attendees and a good number of Northern buyers on the bench.
Store lamb numbers eased back at Temuka this week but the prices headed in the other direction as the lambs coming forward were much heavier than last Monday.
There has been a decent lift in export lamb prices on the spot market as procurement competition lifts up a notch. Some companies lifted prices by 15c/kg this during last week.
The Feilding cattle yards were inundated on Friday as farmers must be thinking now is the the time to offload stock.
30,000 store lambs last week and just under 34,000 today was just too much for the market to handle and prices came back with a thump today.
Farmgate prices lifted in the North Island last week with procurement competition heating up as the kill continues to fall.
The North Island weekly lamb kill dropped 50% in the space of two week as the availability of killable lambs plummets.
Last week lamb prices remained stable with most at $4.30-4.40/kg (gross). Lamb space has still been pretty jammed up but there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel now.
The weekly New Zealand cattle kill continues to run at just over 80,000 head. This is 33% above average for this time of year and is also higher than usual peak kill levels.
One of the smallest yardings of store cattle that Wellsford has offered was up today, with just 59 in total.
With Easter looming and calves taking precedence over older cattle with calf sales kicking into gear, numbers were lighter last week.
It was always going to be a tough ask to sell 14,000 store lambs when much of the North Island is in drought so vendors were not surprised when prices dropped around $5/hd on last week.
Over 1,200 weaners was a smaller yarding than expected but due to continuing dry conditions the smaller number may well have worked in favor of those vendors trading today, though prices were still below expectations.
Unfortunately lamb prices have continued to move lower in the last two week as big numbers of lambs continue to hit the market due to drought conditions.
Cattle continue to pour out for slaughter with cows leading the charge. Some companies continue to focus heavily on killing cows with less space being allocated for steer or bull.
Farmgate prices for works cattle were still under some downward pressure this week with big numbers of dairy cows coming forward for slaughter.