Scone Stock Report: July 17

By Stuart Sheldrake

THERE were 627 cattle penned this week at the Scone saleyards, so a fair bit lighter due to the season and the market was cheaper, except for cows.

Cows have been very solid the last three weeks to to lack of numbers throughout the state, plain cows could have been slightly cheaper.

Lighter cattle and feeder cattle could have been 30 or 40 cents cheaper.

There are a couple of reasons, one being a week and a half of frosts, we had a shower there a few weeks ago things and shot and it was a bit promising if we had some follow up, but then we’ve been belted with frost and we’re back to square one again.

And also we did have a couple of regular buyers out the market which didn’t help things either.

The real worry now, which is playing on a lot of people’s minds is that people have planned to see their cattle through winter and that has blown out because it has become drier and the drought is now everywhere.

The price of feed has gone through the roof and blown a lot of budgets and a lot of people have only budgeted to feed through winter so virtually until September.

We were hoping that we would have had rain by now that there would be some kind of soil moisture to start seeing out a spring, but there is absolutely nothing.

So people who have decided to feed their cattle and there are a lot of them, if it doesn’t rain by September it’s going to be diabolical.