Stock Report: June 4

Stock Report

By Stuart Sheldrake

THERE were 610 cattle yarded this week at the Scone Sale Yards, similar to previous weeks.

The cow market was a bit lack lustre, it was approximately 10 cents cheaper than the previous week.

There were some good cattle penned, good butcher calves along with some very good yearling heifers and that was a good 10 to 20 cents dearer on heavier cattle.

Lighter weaner cattle were also a bit dearer but not an abundance of those.

General market overview

Unfortunately, we’ve had a couple of breaks (with rain) but we just haven’t had any follow up to really cement people’s confidence.

Also, with the election I think the confidence of people has been all over the place, now that the election is over people know more where they are at.

With the season there has been a bit of rain forecast, but unfortunately it hasn’t come.

The market has been quite up and down and hopefully that can level out a bit.

The market in the New England is terrible, places like Tamworth, west Gunnedah, over the last two or three months have experienced what we experienced 12 months ago, selling of cows and yarding 3,000 cattle each week, so that has taken a massive toll.

Heading into the next few months numbers will trim up, there won’t be as many about and that will firm the market up.

When it does rain we’ll hopefully see the market explode which in some ways is good, but the next issue can be a lot of the processors won’t find the cattle so you might see a few of them reducing their kills, so rather than killing five days a week they might go back to a few days which isn’t great.

Because we haven’t had follow up rain, we had two or three inches depending on where you were, and then we had any rain for the last four or five weeks and now with the cold it’s made things difficult.

People had oats crops in they were short and we still haven’t had good rain to keep those going.

There are certain pockets like Willow Tree which have had good rain, it just depends on where you are.

There is still a fair degree of pessimism.