There was positive reports from Ballyjamesduff Mart manger, John Tevlin, this week as it played host to over 1,000 head of cattle between Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s sales.
AgriLand spoke with John after this weeks sales to the get his views on the trade and to see how cattle were selling in the Cavan-based mart.
John stated:
“It was certainly a spring trade for the store cattle that we had this week.
“It was an exceptionally wet day but you would not think it with the way cattle were selling – spring was definitely in the air and Northern customers were driving it on.
The forward-type bullocks were a strong trade, we seen in some cases these bullocks were they averaged close to €2.30/kg. One over-age Charolais bullock, weighing 825kg, sold for €2,030 or €2.46/kg.
“In the store trade, the lighter bullocks (under 450kg) were selling from €2.00/kg up to €2.94/kg. The continental store heifers were topped at €3.17kg for a Charolais heifer weighing 450kg. The plainer store heifers sold back to €2.00/kg.
Image taken before Covid-19 restrictions
He added:
“The good trade on Tuesday, helped things for Wednesday’s sale of weanlings as farmers that had sold cattle the day before were still looking to replace them.
“The best of the lighter continental bull weanlings were crossing the €3.00/kg mark, some Hereford bulls even sold up to €2.88/kg.
“The stronger continental bull weanlings were hitting the €2.50-2.60/kg mark and sold back to €2.30/kg for plainer types.
“The weanling heifers were peaked at €3.26/kg for a Charolais heifer and back to just over €2.00/kg for the very plain dairy-bred heifers.
There was over 130 cows on offer during Wednesday’s sale, with some slight improvement noted by John especially for the younger females.
He said:
The cull cow trade was strong this week too, again we were seeing the northern customers wanting to buy younger cows. The tops of these sold from €2.17/kg back to €1.84/kg.
“The plainer Friesian cows sold back to €1.00/kg, but any of the good store type cows had plenty of customers looking for them.”
Calf sale
The mart also held a sale of 170 calves this week, with John noting some slight dip in prices for some breeds of calves but overall the trade held steady. He stated:
“There was a difference this week for the Jersey-bred calf, they were very poor money. The Friesian-bred calves sold from €40/head ,for the lighter calf, and up to €170/head for a British-Friesian.”
“Angus and Hereford calves sold from €180/head up to €450/head. The farmers that were buying were taking on any of the exporters that we had this week.”
‘Northern customers driving it on’
John continued to highlight that southern customers were finding it very hard to compete with northern buyers this week. He explained:
“The cattle seem to be scarce in the north and they were buying all classes of cattle, from cull cows, weanlings, to forward stores.
“The Northern factories are still very active sourcing cows. The conversion of Sterling to Euro at the minute is also still in their favor,” he concluded.