Ballyjamesduff Mart in Co. Cavan hosted its weekly sale of weanling heifers and bulls, as well as calves and runners on Wednesday, February 14.
Speaking to Agriland after the sale, mart manager John Tevlin gave an overview of the trade seen for the different types of stock.
In the weanling sale, he noted there was a flying trade with the top-end suckler bred weanlings hitting the €4/kg mark on a number of occasions.
He said: “The €4/kg mark seems to be the benchmark for the good weanlings now. There’s great confidence at the minute, but the way I see it is, it’s changing – the people are going to get paid for the quality cattle because there’s less of them about.
“Weanling heifers and bulls are equally a good trade. It’s predominantly local farmers buying and setting the price trend with a few northern farmers buying also. It seems the exporters are not able to give prices going at the minute for better ones.”
“There’s more part-time farmers that want to look at a good one. The whole thing is changing for the better cattle.
He added that the mart hosted a timed auction for Tateetra Farms last weekend and said: “There was a commercial heifer that made €8,100 and was sold to a northern customer.
“You’re in a different level there, people are spending big money on something that they like that’s going to be used for showing. There was nothing under €3,000 in that sale,” he added.
Calf and runner sale
Calf numbers are just beginning to increase in the weekly calf sale at the mart. Commenting on the calf trade, Telvin said: “Calves are a good trade but the light, young calves are back to the €15/head and less again. It’s early in the season to see them out.
“The message is there, if farmers feed calves on for the extra few weeks, they will be paid for them. It may be law that they can be sold at 10-days-old but it makes sense in every way to keep them to a few weeks old.”
He noted that most marts would be happy to increase the age calves can be sold at but said that the stakeholder group “hadn’t put forward that proposal”.
He said that: “As a general rule, farmers in this region are keeping the calves on. There’s a bit of pride in them and there’s something thought of the calf’s sale value.
“There was up to €450 paid for good Hereford bull calves so the good ones are getting into good money.”
After the calf sale, there was a special entry of over 60 out-wintered runners (yearling dairy-beef cattle) which attracted a significant level of interest also.
Sample prices for the runners in the sale:
As these were sold through the calf ring, there was no weights available but these calves sold for up to €840 for a Hereford-cross bullock.
The special entry saw a full clearance with a range of customers securing cattle in this sale.
Ballyjamesduff Mart hosts a heifer and bullock sale every Tuesday.
Dry cows, weanling heifers and weanling bulls are sold on Wednesday mornings followed by calves and runners in the afternoon and sheep on Wednesday evening.
Ballyjamesduff machinery auction
The mart will host a Machinery auction on Wednesday February 28 Wednesday which will feature an executor clearance sale of a range of equipment, some of which was never used.
“Included in the sale is a Massey Ferguson 3640 tractor with a front loader on it. The machine was bought new in 2016 and was never used. It only has 90 hours on it,” Tevlin noted.