Friday, March 29, 2024

Halfbreds come off the hills at full price

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Maniototo farmers cleared the decks in grand fashion ahead of the start of the duck-shooting season. The famous Last Muster Sale at Waipiata sale yards near Ranfurly on Tuesday brought in a record 20,500 lambs from the hills, newly weaned, very well presented and they sold very well, PGG Wrightson Otago livestock manager John Duffy said.
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PGW’s share of the muster was 12,500 lambs, mostly halfbreds.

The average price for them was $119 a head. The top-cut made $130 to $140, a big number of middle-cut lambs $115 to $125 and the third cut of younger, smaller lambs sold at $90 to $100.

Stock numbers were high because of the excellent season – a wet spring, good early summer growth and a mild autumn – meant most farmers carried their lambs through a lot longer than in a usual, dry Central Otago summer. Extra pens had to be put up at to handle the numbers.

The halfbreds are born later than the crossbred lambs sold months and weeks earlier as stores or for processing but cannot be carried through the winter. They’re the last of the lambs and have to be sold and the week duck shooting starts was chosen as an ideal time, hence the Last Muster Sale.

“They’re well-bred and we have the same 25 or so vendors each year and the same repeat buyers who chase the same breed each time because they’ve done so well with them in the past,” Duffy said.

Most of the lambs are sold to specialist finishers and cropping farmers in Mid Canterbury. They come off the hills to the warmer plains pastures where they thrive through the winter, are shorn for a valuable mid-micron wool clip and finished well for the good spring lamb schedules.

“They get good margins.”

The overall head-count was up about 5000 on last year and the average price was about $2 higher, a very good return, Duffy said. 

“It was a good, fair market. The vendors were happy and the buyers were happy.”

Nearly all the lambs are sold for finishing with just a few pens of ewe lambs for bought for breeding.

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