There was a good selection of 160 lots of cattle in Clones Mart on Thursday (March 18) – despite the sale seeing slightly lower numbers than the previous week. The mart played host to calves, dry cows, heifers and bullocks.
Also Read: Pics and prices: Forward bullocks sell up to €2,000 at Clones MartSpeaking to AgriLand after this week’s sale, manager Sean Cadden stated:
“Overall, the trade today was very good, with lots of good cattle passing through the rings.
“The online bidding is going well in here in the mart, there was plenty of online bidders today. It’s still working well for the farmer that is selling cattle at the minute – but the farmer that is buying stock at the minute is facing a bit of difficulty.
The trade might have been a bit easier this week, but last week we had some really good cattle on offer. It left the store trade being very strong last week.
“I suppose we might not have had the same quality of animals in the mart today compared to last week – but in saying that there was plenty of nice stores to choose from.
“We were seeing the store heifers around the 400-500kg bracket topped at €2.55/kg for a Charolais, with some nice demand seen for the Hereford heifers too.
“The mid-range weighing store bullock around 400-500kg was probably averaging around €2.20-2.25/kg for the continentals – but it was the lighter stores under 400kg that were dominating and selling up to €2.62/kg in cases.
“The forward-type and heavy bullock or heifer was scarce on the ground this week, but we saw heavy bullocks topped up at €2.51/kg for an 800kg Charolais bullock – so again the edge is certainly still there for these type of cattle.
“With the calves we had, it was mostly Friesian bulls – these sold from €15/head up to €90/head. There was a few Hereford and Angus bull calves making on average €170-180/head.”