Scone Stock Report: Sept 12

By Stuart Sheldrake

THERE was an increased yarding of 1,830 due to the dry conditions, which is up nearly 600 on last week, so a fair increase.

The market was cheaper overall.

It took a fair dive this week mainly because of numbers and there is nowhere to go with store cattle at the moment because there is such wide spread area which is dry country.

I’d imagine it will remain like this until we get better weather.

Many people just have no other choice to offload cattle, which they normally would have held onto throughout spring, but they’ve had to bite the bullet and send them to market.

There were similar numbers of export cattle to previous weeks and they sold to firm rates.

The majority of the yarding was made up of weaner and yearling cattle, which have felt the impact of the dry.

There were very few butcher calves and the remainder were feeder cattle.

The butcher cattle they could have been 10 to 15 cents cheaper.

Good lines of weaner steers were 10 to 15 cents cheaper also.

Secondary lines though were 20 to 25 cents cheaper.

Heifer counterparts, good lines were the same as the steers, 10 to 15 cents cheaper.

But lines of weaner heifers were 20 to 30 cheaper.

Secondary yearling heifers were 25 to 35 cheaper.