In a falling market, some cattle are still selling dearer

Sliding cattle prices are hitting across the board but some sweet spots show which cattle are selling for more.

A BREED-by-breed analysis of online cattle sales has shown sweet spots where cattle sold better than at the start of last year.

AuctionsPlus has just released its fourth quarter results analysing prices by breed, with some females showing the only improvement on start of year rates.

For Angus cattle, the only price increase from quarter one to quarter four was for station-mated Angus breeders, which rose from $2239 to $2538.

When it came to Herefords, the market sector which showed improvement from quarter one to quarter four were heifers weighing 280-330kg which rose from $1888 to $1912.

But in no surprise, other steer and heifer rates showed falls from the start of the year, with 280-330kg Angus steers dropping from $2221 at the end of Q1 to $2085 at the end of Q4, a decrease of about 7 per cent, while similar weight Hereford steers fell from $2077 to $1989, a fall of about 4 per cent.

There are few categories of livestock that are selling higher than they were at the start of last year.

AuctionsPlus senior analyst Damien Thomson said the platform offered 196,328 cattle in the fourth quarter, with a backlog of beef hitting the market, delayed by widespread rain and extensive flooding in previous months.

“While varying across breeds and categories, most of the lines for the December quarter averaged from five to ten per cent below the same period in 2021,” Mr Thomson said.

Some of the results from the AuctionsPlus analysis showed:

- prices for pure Hereford categories in the December quarter had fallen an average of 8.4 per cent from the same quarter of 2021;

- average prices for purebred Angus cattle have risen 4.8 per cent from the previous quarter, while they remain 4.4 per cent lower than the corresponding quarter in 2021.

Further north, prices for Bos Indicus cattle have also been hit.

Brahman steer prices slipped from $1750 in Q1 to $1286 at the end of last year for lighter lines and from $1887 to $1323 for 280-330kg steers, a drop of 30 per cent.

And while interest in the south for breeders has kept rates solid and even seen lifts, the same is not being seen in the north.

“Droughtmaster heifers weighing 200-280kg liveweight averaged $1363 in the fourth quarter of 2022, 15.8 per cent lower than the same period in 2021,” Mr Thomson said.

“Across all categories, Droughtmaster prices had risen 3.1 per cent from the previous quarter but fell 10.8 per cent from the same quarter in 2021.”