Euroa cattle sale: Northern buyers influence huge prices

Prices were reaching well above 800c/kg for young cattle at the Euroa sale. See the “amazing” results here.

Lightweight calves made what some were calling ‘amazing’ money at Euroa's store sale. These 125kg steers made $1090.

Young steers and heifers exploded in price at Euroa’s store cattle sale yesterday, reaching above 800c/kg liveweight.

“Is this the dearest market I’ve seen? Put it this way if its not it is certainly well up there,” commission buyer Geoff Braun answered to the question a lot of locals were asking themselves.

Local Euroa agent Col Broughton rated lightweight calves as the dearest he had witnessed.

Calculators were pulled out a number of times as young steers and heifers weighing less than 270kg pushed towards $1900 a head on occasion.

Examples of this included Gooram Springs pen of 19 young Angus steers, aged seven to eight months, which had a displayed weight of 222kg to sell for the equivalent of 842c/kg liveweight.

This was exceeded by a small pen of four steers with a weight of 125kg which sold for $1090 to work out at 872c/kg liveweight — rivalling the carcass weight money being seen for lambs.

And the hot bidding continued into the heifer run where sales of young Angus calves consistently went above 600c/kg, some pens even making over 700c/kg.

“This heifer market has just exploded on demand for female cattle to go north,” agent Dan Ivone, of Nutrien Paull & Scollard from Myrtleford said.

Commission buyer Duncan Brown was a dominant bidder in the heifer section, among his purchases being 30 Angus calves from BR and EC Lundstrum at $1840, which on a weight of 261kg worked out to 704c/kg.

He confirmed to The Weekly Times they were being trucked a “fair way north”, and hinted buyers in NSW and Queensland were looking at young cattle in the south with a different price measuring stick.

“Black heifers made 890c/kg at Roma (in Queensland),” Mr Brown said.

“Every day you go out into a market it is getting dearer and dearer — and there is new faces (such as agents and farmers) coming out to buy.

“You just can’t value store cattle at the moment, everyday they are making more money.”

There is a couple of factors that need to be noted about the Euroa sale. It was a “wintery” yarding of cattle that lacked condition, meaning they often had decent frame-size and physically looked heavier than the displayed weights suggested.

So on paper the sale does sound dearer in cents-a-kilogram terms than how the cattle physically presented, and many buyers were confident of being able to quickly add kilograms in spring.

The really hot cents-a-kilogram prices weren’t across all weights or breeds. The opening laneways of heavy steers were just firm on recent rates, such as $2230 for 18 Angus at 407kg to equal 547c/kg.

“Not all cattle were dearer, the heaviest Angus steers were similar to what we have seen,” Euroa agent Mick Curtis said.

“It was the lighter end of the steers and the heifers that really kicked — some of the heifers could be $100 to $150 dearer.”

MORE

PRODUCERS MUST DECIDE TO SELL OR HOLD SUCKER LAMBS

RED MEAT NUTRITION UNDER SCRUTINY

WHERE THE RAIN FELL IN JULY