Loughrea Mart held its first sheep sale since marts were given the green light to reopen – albeit under strict protocols and social distancing measures.
The sale was held on Thursday, April 24, and saw 450 sheep on offer – which is similar to the number that would be on offer under normal circumstances.
Despite there being a good trade for all types of sheep, Loughrea’s mart manager, Jimmy Cooney, was far from impressed with the rules and regulations that had to be applied during the restricted sale.
Speaking to AgriLand about the system that was in place for Thursday’s sale, Jimmy said: “The way we are being told to run the sales is just not safe and, in my opinion, people are more at risk at picking up this disease [Covid-19] than they ever were.
“We started taking in sheep at 8:30am and, by the time the sale was wrapped up, it was 12:15pm, which is far too long to sell that number of sheep and to have buyers and sellers hanging around for.
“Under normal circumstances, if we took in sheep at that time [8:30am], we would have a larger number sold by 11:00am.
Some of the rules that we have to enforce are just crazy and it doesn’t work in the sense of being hygienic and keeping our customers safe.
“Personally, in my opinion, the way we have to run the sales now is more of a health risk for farmers than it was before the mart closed.
“The buyers and sellers that were at the sale agreed with me on that; it’s very hard to manage.”
‘Time-consuming’
As well as the health risks that Jimmy believes are associated with the way marts are being asked to facilitate sales, he says it is also a very time-consuming process.
He added: “The time it takes for each buyer to go and look through the sheep and make a bid is ridiculous. What you end up with is people congregating together because they have to wait around for such a long period of time.
When all the bids come in we have to ring up the sellers and see are they happy with the price and in some cases we couldn’t get through to some farmers, so we ended up having to wait 20 minutes or more to get a call back from them.
“In short, the system is a complete and utter disaster.”
Sheep penned at Loughrea Mart prior to Covid-19
‘Ramadan driving the trade’
Despite the difficulty in managing the sale, Jimmy reported a very good trade for all types of stock that were on offer.
The majority of sheep that were on offer consisted of spring lambs, hoggets and cast ewes, with only one pen of ewes with lambs at foot presented for sale.
In terms of hoggets, prices for these lots ranged from €119/head for factory-fit hoggets up to €134/head for butcher-type stock.
In the cast ewe section, prices for both feeding and heavy-type ewes ranged from €80/head up to €130/head.
Finally, there was one pen of ewes with single lambs at foot; this pen sold for €170/head.
According to Jimmy, due to the Ramadan festival, buyers were eager to get their hands on what sheep they could.