Parched paddocks in the Mortlake district of Victoria, pictured late April. Click on image for a larger view

AN Elders agent who has been in the game for 50 years said this week he couldn’t remember a time when there was not a dry area in some part of Queensland. Certainly, some areas are a lot better than others, but there’s no drought anywhere.

Contrast this to areas across the south that are encountering unprecedented dryness, and you can see why there are some interesting dynamics at play in markets.

Across the Northern Territory/Queensland region while isolated areas are struggling with cattle movements, numbers are starting to flow. With disruptions to kills through April (with the weather and short processing weeks), processors have been overwhelmed with QLD works reporting they are booked out till July.

Big runs of cows are starting to come out of the NT and are being priced liveweight delivered Sturt Downs and being trucked to Townsville or to southern QLD for processing at the equivalent of $2.60c/kg lw Townsville or $2.80c/kg lw Roma for a good kill cow.

Bullocks were selling at around $3.20c/kg lw Charter Towers last week but a slaughter boat order into Vietnam at $3.40c/kg lw will help on the bullocks at weights around 650kgs. Export bulls are similarly well priced at $2.80-$2.90c/kg lw. There is a feeling that a slowing in the Indo feeder trade is switching export focus to Vietnam which will be good for northern QLD slaughter cattle.

The southern Qld feeder market is also seeing a lift in available supplies with last weeks quote of $3.80-3.90c/kg lw Downs for a flat-back under pressure from weight of numbers. Seems with the difficulty in sourcing Angus feeders and the relative prices attractiveness of flatbacks, some southern feedlots may be switching focus to shorter fed cattle specifications with reports that a few QLD feeder cattle are starting to move south. Some of our feedlot agents are reporting that there has been a lift in interest for no-pill cattle from the feedlots given the pick-up in buying from China.

Source: MLA

This chart shows QLD vs NSW saleyard feeder cattle indicator prices c/kg liveweight.

About half of New South Wales is ok season-wise but most central and southern areas without feed have resigned themselves that there won’t be much until Spring and are offloading cattle at lighter weights that they would otherwise have carried through winter. These cattle under 300kg were getting very cheap last week but have sparked some restocker interest with backgrounders and feedlots buying to put on grass in western NSW or southern QLD with the aim of moving them to feedlots at 400kgs later in the year.

Across Victoria and SA where pasture is ‘threadbare’ the focus is now on trying to make sure those having to offload their breeding nucleus are sending them to restockers rather than to the meatworks because once the season turns, they will find strong demand again.

Much needed soaking rain of 15-25mm across the northern part of Tassie, in the main of the restocker or grower areas, gave the flagging cattle market a bit of support. The Tassie works have plenty of numbers in front of them with the dry and with the turnoff of dairy cows before winter.

Over the hooks rates have been static for the past fortnight with program yearlings $7-7.20/kg and cows $5.80/kg with the better end of the dairy cows $4.70-5/kg.

The store market has lifted with heifers the biggest movers picking up 40 to 50c/kg lw on the better lines, in particular, the black cattle to sit around $2.60-$3.10/kg lw.

The steer market was solid on well bred, black cattle and anything with weight 400kg plus sold up around $3.40c/kg lw. Cattle in weight range 300-400kgs were $3.30-3.80/kg lw with the lighter types $3.50-4.10/kg lw.

The hope for Tassie is that the rain will provide a bit of growth before it gets too cold. Although there was snow on the mountains mid-week, the weather cleared up quickly with nice balmy days for the rest of the week, 19-20 degrees and overnight temps 8-10 degrees which is allowing the ground temperatures to stay warm to allow a bit of growth before winter.

It has been a month between drinks for key livestock areas of WA and things are starting to tighten up with most areas looking for rain to promote a final spurt of growth before winter. The northern third of WA remains dry, although most of the livestock have already been moved out of the area. Saleyard markets will include an increasing proportion of pastoral cattle as the northern season ramps up. Last week’s sale was still mostly local cattle but included a few mixed lines for pastoral areas. The quality of pastoral cattle should begin to even out as the larger stations move into their bigger runs.

Author Richard Koch is chief analyst with Elders. He writes a regular regional cattle markets wrap for Beef Central.