National lamb price record smashed at Bendigo sale

The national lamb record has been smashed yet again, with a pen of lambs at Bendigo setting a new national record by $4. See the latest.

A pen of heavy lambs made $435 at Bendigo prime lamb sale on July 7.

The national saleyard lamb record has been smashed yet again, as processors battle to find quality slaughter stock.

A new record of $435 was paid at Bendigo’s prime sheep and lamb sale on Monday, $4 higher than the $431 national high achieved at the Griffith, NSW, sale in June. Bendigo’s result brings the record back to Victoria.

The new record-breaking lambs were a pen of extra heavy crossbred lambs which were estimated to have a size of 40-42 kilograms carcass weight.

McKean McGregor sold the lambs at Bendigo and auctioneer Alex Collins said the $435 lambs were part of a line of 375 head out of a Swan Hill feedlot which averaged $424.

The lambs were second-cross White Suffolk and Poll Dorset lambs which had been long-term grain-fed to the super export weights. To give an idea of size, he said the lambs had averaged around 82kg liveweight straight off feed.

Mr Collins rated the Bendigo sale as “as good as we’ve seen it”.

The quote by the National Livestock Reporting Service was 1050-1150c/kg for most quality processing lambs, with some neat trade types pushing above 1200c/kg.

Overall seven pens of heavy export lambs sold above $400 a head at Bendigo.

Mr Collins said it would be interesting to see if the new record could be broken, as like most other agencies they were running out of clients who were still holding big export lambs.

“We haven’t got a lot of lambs like this coming up, particularly not of this size of 40kg-carcass weight plus,” he said.

It comes after all Meat and Livestock Australia’s lamb indicators reached new highs last week, with the national heavy lamb indicator sitting at it’s highest ever level of 1102c/kg carcass weight. This is 61c/kg higher than last week and 302c/kg higher than the same time last year.

The national trade lamb indicator is at 1072.94c/kg, also its highest level, and is 42c/kg higher than last week and 283c/kg than last year.

The national Merino lamb indicator has also hit an all-time high at 949c/kg, up 63c/kg for the week and 309c/kg higher than the same time last year.

MLA market information analyst Emily Tan said the step up in prices again was largely due to short supply.

“Producers are also struggling to get weight on lambs and there really aren’t many lambs above 35kg being offered,” she said.