Not even the livestock market has been immune to our ongoing wet weather, with Elders livestock specialist Matt Rowlands expecting conditions to remain the same for at least the next month to six weeks.
Rowlands said the biggest problem impacting on numbers is mostly freight related – country roads have been severely impacted by closures and degradation, especially narrow dirt roads.
He said while the Swan Hill yards have been mostly able to hold their own, with numbers just a little behind where they would normally be, that has not been the case with prices.
“The market has come back a little bit, about $10-$20 on lambs and at least $20-$30 on mutton,” Rowlands said.
“But in fairness, that is a reflection of quality and supply.
“We feel many sheep producers are hanging onto lambs, in particular, because they are not where they want them to be in condition and weight, as a result of the cold and wet.
“There are still a lot of numbers to come and that will mostly be in sheep, but there is some risk there may be a local sell-off in cattle depending how pastures and feed availability hold up.”
Rowlands said they were also now seeing a little bit of scald in some areas, as you would expect after such a prolonged wet period.
He said with the spring flush delayed, things should start picking up as soon as the weather improves.
“The meat trade is certainly looking for a lot of lambs and sheep, taking up most of recent offerings as restockers have become more subdued by the conditions,” Rowlands said.
“With rain forecast this weekend, hopefully things will start to improve beyond that, but if it doesn’t, typically people will be looking to offload their base value stock as the best outcome going forward, they will have no hesitation making those decisions, so that will generate more numbers in coming weeks.
“We have one more cattle sale to go in Swan Hill this year – on December 1 – and that will be it until 2023.”
Rowlands said while there are no major stud sales on the horizon, he expected there will be some outstanding opportunities to access cutting edge genetics in the next month or two.
He said that will happen when some cattle and sheep enterprises may be forced to really bring back their numbers, so they will have to start shedding core breeding stock.
“That will provide a rare window of opportunity for local producers to access some leading bloodlines and start to fast-track their own genetic profiles,” he said.
“Overall, this is an unusual market, dominated by our incredibly unusual weather, so hopefully that doesn’t keep dragging on.
“Once we get the numbers coming onto the market, I just hope we have the capacity to get stock from farms to the yards, and then the trucks to get them away.
“Getting big trucks into some places is going to be a real challenge, and that will have a domino effect along the supply chain.
“So we are looking forward to things drying off soon, instead of waking up in late November to a morning that feels like early August.”
