Editor’s note: This report has been substantially altered, after Beef Central investigations found discrepancies in results released earlier. 

BULLS sold to $105,000 and a heifer in-utero made $95,000 at the Elite Wagyu sale at the Wagyu Expansion Conference in Albury NSW yesterday. Both sales were Australian record prices for the breed and stunned the 400 delegates in attendance.

Beef Central’s comprehensive list of beef breed record prices (click here to view) suggests yesterday’s female sale – albeit in vitro – is an Australian all-breeds record for registered females sold at auction.

Yesterday’s top-priced bull at $105,000 smashes the previous breed record set in 1998 of just $16,500, but it needs to be pointed out that Wagyu bulls have historically been rarely sold at auction in Australia.

In what may also be all-breeds records for a multi-vendor seedstock sale, seven Fullblood Wagyu females sold yesterday averaged $25,570, and ten Fullblood bulls averaged $20,799.

Vendors of the all-breeds record priced $95,000 in-utero Wagyu heifer Laird and Sonia Morgan, left, with agents Jeremy Cooper of Wag-You dot com and John Settree of Landmark. Absentee buyer was South African Hendrick Markram from South Africa.

Fourth generation Queensland cattle producer Ian Hewitt and his son Cameron went to $105,000 to obtain the two year old sire Mayura L0010 for their new Wagyu enterprise based at Hanging Rock Station, Charters Towers, Qld.  Offered by the de Bruin family’s Mayura stud at Millicent SA, this sire is in the top one per cent of the breed for FTI and marbling.

The bull will go to a semen collection centre near Rockhampton before heading to his new home where a couple of thousand Shorthorn X Brahman cows will be joined to Wagyu each year with the F1 females retained to increase the Wagyu content in the herd.

Ian Hewitt said they intended to become heavily involved in the Wagyu industry to elevate marbling levels and generate lotfeeder interest in their cattle.

Vendor of the $105,000 record-priced Wagyu bull, Scott de Bruin, Mayura, Millicent SA and buyer Cameron Hewitt, Hanging Rock Station, Charters Towers QLD.South African wagyu breeder, Hendrick Markram’s Miku Wagyu Stud, a relative newcomer to the Wagyu breed, paid $95,000 for a heifer in utero offered by Laird and Sonia Morgan, Arubial Pty Ltd, Condamine Qld.

The buyer was on the telephone from South Africa giving bidding instructions to Jeremy Cooper of Wag-You dot com, who said the heifer would remain in Australia to breed cattle that may be exported at some point in the future.

The common thread in both the record bull and heifer price was that they sat in the top one percent of the breed’s Fullblood Terminal index (FTI) indicating the growing acceptance of Wagyu Breedplan figures generated by the rapidly expanding  Wagyu database of growth, fertility and carcase information.

Roger Hocking’s Summitt Agricutural, Albury, NSW, headed the volume buyers at the sale, outlaying $86,200 for live cattle and genetic lots.

Overall sales results included:

• 7 females average $25,570
• 28 embryos averaged $2600/embryo
• 10 bulls averaged $20,799
• 160 semen straws averaged $334/straw (note: this result has been amended from that originally issued by the Australian Wagyu Association)

The sale was conducted by Ruralco through Grant Daniel Long and interfaced with AuctionsPlus. Havey Weyman-Jones and Peter Brazier were the auctioneers.

Click here to access Beef Central’s exclusive database of beef breed record prices for bulls and females.