This week’s factory quotes sees the top beef price offerings from last week remain available, despite a number of outlets reducing their beef price quotes by 5c/kg this week.
The top prices holding while lower-paying outlets are attempting to reduce their price offerings, would suggest the motive to pull prices is supply lead, rather than demand lead.
The May bank holiday Monday on May 6 sees most outlets operating a four-day kill this week, reducing the volume of cattle required to fill out kill sheets.
Kill sheets are still being filled-out almost entirely with shed-finished cattle, and grass-finished heifers would generally start to come in numbers in late May or early June, when shed cattle supplies from farmers have dried up.
With the delayed start to the grazing season this year, larger supplies of grass cattle could well be delayed a few weeks this year, which could cause a tightening of supply towards the end of this month.
Naturally enough, processors will be braced for this, but will still be depending on farmers for a good percentage of the beef cattle supply in these weeks, and assuming cattle are slow to come out, prices could well increase.
However, waiting for a beef price increase is risky, and the best advice is always to move cattle on as they come fit.
Last year, prices peaked in mid-April and gradually declined from then onwards. Farmers who were ‘holding on’ for a beef price rise this time last year, would have found themselves likely taking less money for cattle a few weeks later.
But, as beef farmers will know themselves, while beef prices can often follow a general trend, no two years are exactly the same and it remains to be see what impact, if any, the wet spring will have on finished cattle supplies over the coming few weeks.