What’s on and what’s been cancelled due to day of mourning

The official day of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II is proving a mixed blessing for agriculture as the industry tries to deal with the fallout.

The official day of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II is proving a mixed blessing for agriculture as the industry tries to deal with the fallout of a last-minute public holiday.

The Henty Machinery Field Days has announced it will go ahead as normal next week and is even expecting additional crowds, but prime sales have been cancelled that day and could cause a backlog of livestock numbers.

A spokesman for the Henty Machinery Field Days said they “acknowledged’ the public holiday on September 22 but they would be “opening as planned”.

“With an action packed three days, there is something for everyone at our first field days since 2019,” the spokesman said.

“The public holiday on Thursday September 22 provides a great opportunity for everyone to attend.”

Henty Field Days will run as planned.

The flip side though is the impact on prime sales, with major centres like Wagga Wagga calling off its Thursday lamb sale which is attracting up to 60,000 a week this spring.

Wagga Regional Livestock agent Isaac Hill said producers had been caught off-guard and now would be forced to either sell early this week or postpone their consignments selling into a market where there were two short kill weeks due to the Labour Day holiday in NSW.

“We will be helping clients to work out if they can sell privately or how they tackle it but it is going to certainly upset the flow of sheep and lambs and prices,” Mr Hill said.

“We are just lucky that we are in a La Nina and there is plenty of feed because imagine if we were in a drought and people were unable to hold numbers.

“Producers may be forced to wait a month until the glut caused by this and the other short kill weeks disappears.”