Numbers increased at the Dalby cattle sale on Wednesday morning with the dry conditions forcing people to continue offloading.
The market remained firm for the 6929-head yarding, with medium and heavy weight yearling steers to feed remaining very close to the previous week’s level, and a large sample of cows being offered with prices remaining strong for quality pens.
A large portion of the yarding was drawn from western Queensland, with the shortage of grass, grain and hay forcing many to sell.
A Keith and Co, Mountview, Karanga North, offered a quality lineup of 87 Charolais-cross steers weighing 351kg, which sold for 294c/kg to make $1036/head.
Mountview managers Michael and Karen Schreiber said they were happy with the return considering their oats had run out and they were forced to offload.
“Normally we like to target the heavy feeder weight and get them to about the 450 to 470kg mark, but we’ve run out of feed and grain,” Mr Schreiber said.
“If we had more grain on hand to put through them we would have got them up to the 470kg, but there’s no money in buying grain at $400 a tonne and putting it through the beast now.”
Mr Schreiber said it had been a tough season at Mountview, and things had been made all the harder by the Western Downs region losing its drought declared status.
“It was declared but rain earlier in the year meant it lost that status, even though the rain was very patchy,” he said.
“The rain wasn’t across the board within the Western Downs and for a lot of graziers it shouldn’t have been taken off.
“I don’t know where they get their data or the facts from, but if you do the overall spectrum of the area, there would’ve been a lot of places that got minimal rainfall through the summer, and yet everyone in that area, unless they do an individual drought declaration, was put in the same boat.”
The 87 steers sold at Dalby on Wednesday was just the first for Mountview, with more weaners set to be offloaded in the weeks to come so the breeder herd can be maintained.
“Offloading breeders is the last resort, so there’ll be more weaners coming through in the next three to four weeks that have been on oats.
“The breeders for our enterprise is the one thing that we want to keep fully stocked because we need the numbers to be on the ground when it does turn around to try and help our cash flow.”
GDL agent, Joe Lehman, Dalby, said the market was possibly 10 cents dearer in places with the increased price for meatworks cows and bullocks lifting the price of feeder steers.
“A lot of people are running out of feed, so we’ve seen cattle come from as far afield as Blackall and Windorah this week,” he said.
Steers in the 400kg and over range sold from 278c/kg to 304c/kg to top at $1323/head, while cows sold from 220c/kg to 238c/kg to average $1335/head.
