Hay Merino sale: Price history made as young ewes make $512 a head

Merino ewe prices set a new saleyard record at the annual Hay sheep sale in the Riverina.

History was made at the annual Hay Merino sale in southern NSW today when a pen of young ewes sold for $512 a head.

It is a new saleyard record for store Merino ewes, beating the $480 achieved at nearby Hillston earlier this month.

The price was paid for the opening pen of Yarto ewes, bred by Greg and Helen Rogers of Booligal. The ewes were the biggest 2020-drop maidens in the yarding, assessed for the AuctionsPlus catalogue at an average of 68kg liveweight.

There was 404 in the pen for an overall cost of nearly $207,000, and they sold to repeat buyers Geoff and Di Allan of Melrose at Mathoura.

Less than a dozen pens of young ewes sold for more than $400, and these lofty prices were the domain of specialist first-cross ewe breeders like the Allans who sell a feature run of Border Leicester Merino-cross ewes at Bendigo in November each year.

“Top-end sheep sold really well but then there was some holes in it, particularly across the middle runs,” Nutrien’s Bill O’Brien said. “It is hard to really know why but Covid has definitely had an impact with no Victorians, and AuctionsPlus didn’t fill the gaps like we thought.”

Mrs Allan said walking into a sale prepared to pay over $500 was mentally challenging, and they had spent time going through the figures after the Hillston sale drew a new line in the sand.

“It really is a physiological thing, and we started talking about it after that Hillston sale (where ewes sold to $480) went out of control,’’ she said. “But once you get your head around the numbers it makes sense.”

Those ballpark numbers for the Allans was an average of $300 for lambs (based on $200 for the wether portion and $400 for the first-cross ewes), $45 for wool cut, and a very conservative $80 for mutton (allowing for deaths over time and ewes that don’t join or re-join which are culled).

“That’s over $400 on conservative figures, so a $100 donation to buy the best ewes is not that bad,’’ Geoff said.

The sale did receive a round of applause, and for breeders the Rogers family it was a much appreciated high after missing last year’s sale when during the peak of the drought they made the decision to skip a lambing to protect their breeding flock.

“We thought anything over $450 would have been a great result,’’ he said.

The next best price in the young ewe run was $475 for the Daisy Plain ewes, which were also among the biggest and bloomiest in the yarding at 61.3kg liveweight; followed by the Coulparto ewes at $450 and the Alma ewes at $444.

But it wasn’t a free-flowing sale, and auctioneers did have to work for their bids.

The majority of the middle to lead runs of young Merino ewes sold from $300 to $370 a head, and late in the sale on smaller ewes the price tags were $240 to $280.

One agent from the Mallee said farmers running a general flock breeding crossbred lambs, such as White Suffolks over Merinos, were “hesitant to go much over $300’’.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the crowd was much smaller than usual, although interestingly most of the top-priced lots sold to people who had made the effort to attend the auction rather than bid online.

AuctionsPlus appeared to have more influence on the lower priced lots at $250 to $320 a head.