Loughrea Mart held its first sheep sale of the new year last Thursday, January 13, which saw prices reach €166/head for lambs/hoggets.

It was a small sale to kickstart the year for the Galway-based mart but it consisted of a good range of both store, forward feeding and heavy hoggets.

Comparing the trade to the mart’s last sale prior to the Christmas, prices were back on Thursday by about €2-4/head for hoggets.

Factory agents could be heard saying that “the trade has changed a lot since last week”, citing the reason why prices have dipped since the end of last week at marts.

Click on a thumbnail in the gallery (below) to open up a full-size image; once opened you can scroll sideways to see the next picture. Refer to each caption to see details of each lot, including the hammer price.

Looking at the trade on the day and starting with the finished hoggets, prices ranged from €145/head up to €166/head.

Stores, both long and short keep types, traded from a base of €111/head for 34kg up to €140/head for forward feeding stores.

A small selection of both light and heavy ewes were on offer at Loughrea last Thursday, with prices starting from just over €90/head for store types and working up to €148-150/head for heavier ewes in the 85-90kg weight bracket.

Lastly, a few pens of in-lamb ewes were also on offer, with all ewes being second and third ewes, scanned in-lamb to a Texel ram and due from late-February onwards.

These ewes were carrying anything from singles right up to triplets and sold from a base of €150/head for ewes carrying singles, up to €188/head for ewes carrying twin and triplet lambs.