National price record topples in our biggest sheep sale yet

Records have tumbled at another sheep sale with lambs selling to a national record high of $460 a head on Tuesday, with a whopping 59,050 yarded at the Central West Livestock Exchange. Forbes Shire Council reported the yarding as the biggest on its records. The top price lambs were presented at Tuesday’s weekly Forbes sheep sale by Goimbla Partnership, Matthew and Kylie Parker from Eugowra. They were on lucerne before being feedlotted in the leadup to sale, said auctioneer Adam Chudleigh, livestock agent and director at MCC Chudleigh Dobell. Even better, the record-lambs were an all-local effort, bred by the Townsends at Eugowra from Morrisons’ first-cross ewes and Ridgehaven rams, he added. “Unbelievable” was how Mr Chudleigh described the sale. “They all weighed over 90 kg and up to 114kg, 115kg,” he said. “He’s grown them out well, taken his time with them and been rewarded.” The next top pen, also presented by Goimbla, sold for $437 a head. It was only a matter of weeks ago on Tuesday, 10 June, that the top run of lambs made $400 for the first time at the Forbes sale, the national record at that time held by Victorian yards. Fast forward a month to Tuesday, 15 July and Forbes set a national record of $454 with three pens surpassing the previous record. The region and livestock exchange are proving their pulling power as well as the strength of our own production. “Lambs have travelled distances to come to the market,” Chudleigh said. “We’ve still got a lot of Queensland sheep there, a lot of northern NSW sheep, even western Riverina sheep coming up which is great to see.” With lower yardings resulting from drought down south, the demand from processors continues and this region has had a decent enough season to be able to hold on to stock. While the extra heavyweight lambs were destined for export, Tuesday’s sale saw a continued excellent prices for trade lambs on a cents per kilo basis, Mr Chudleigh said. “Good domestic trade lambs are making $11 and $12.50 a kilo,” he said. “Another really good highlight of today’s market was that we saw probably 1000 new season lambs, not even six months old, they made anywhere from $280 to $304 - that’s massive.” Tuesday’s records in the sheep sale followed a Monday cattle sale auctioner Adam Chudleigh described as “phenomenal”. Central West Livestock Exchange put the spotlight on a pen of 16 Angus steers that sold for 497c a kilo through Kevin Miller Whitty Lennon and Co. Our shire’s livestock agents have all reflected on the strength of recent markets, with plenty of highlights for each to share across the sheep and cattle in the different markets. “We’ve got both northern and southern processors competing and also northern and southern feedlotters competing (for cattle),” Mr Chudleigh said. “So it’s a very good time for the livestock sector. “Not that long ago we were selling the same weight lambs (as Tuesday’s top price pen) and flat out getting $200 for them,” Mr Chudleigh said. “It might not be there forever but at the moment we’ll ride the high.” Friday, 25 July is the monthly store cattle sale at the selling centre.

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