Beef farmers find their smiles as prices push record levels

SALEYARD prices for cattle and cows are booming and beef farmers couldn’t be happier.

KILLAFADDY SALEYARDS

SALEYARD prices for cattle and cows are booming and beef farmers couldn’t be happier.

Prices for cows sold into the export market and younger trade cattle sold to butchers and processors at the weekly Elders sale at Killafaddy, near Launceston, were close to record levels.

The highest price for cows, which weighed an average 550kg, was $2.08 a kilo. Happy farmer Max Freeland sold two pens with each cow fetching about $1200.

Elders livestock agent Danny Slater said the West Tamar farmer “had a smile on his face so big I nearly had to send him to hospital to get it off”.

The trade cattle sold for even higher prices at $2.54 a kilo.

Beef farmer Peter Woodland, 64, who runs 200 angus and hereford on two properties at Pipers Brook and Karoola in the state’s North, said the price of beef had doubled in the past 20 years but the cost of production had quadrupled.

He said mainland buyers were visiting because “they can’t get cattle ­because of the drought and they’ve got the markets for them”.

Mr Woodland said he’d been going to Killafaddy for 50 years.

“Prices are better than as long as I’ve been going,” he said.