Saturday, March 30, 2024

Livestock sales proceed with caution

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Livestock selling centres in the South Island are treading with caution as covid-19 level two restrictions kick back in.
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Hazlett Livestock manager Ed Marfell said the timing is helpful and the weekly Thursday Coalgate sale is going ahead as usual.

“We will continue to operate as we did previously under level two,” Marfell said.

“We will be contact tracing, recording everyone who is here, social distancing and practicing good hand hygiene.”

Marfell said with the sheep sale starting at 9am and the option to push the cattle sale out half an hour, keeping people numbers under 100 is manageable.

“We will likely move the cattle start out to noon and with the lesser numbers we have for the sale, we don’t think it will be an issue to keep under 100 (people); we can slip it through with not even a crossover,” he said. 

“At this stage we are looking to have just 1500 sheep and 90 cattle so not a big yarding at all.”

Given the time of year Marfell said there is no real pressure on the sale yards under a level two situation.

“Being lambing and calving time, August sales are the quiet days anyway,” he said.

“We are lucky we are in August mode where yardings everywhere are as quiet as ever.”

In Temuka the Thursday cattle sales are fortnightly at this time of the year, so this week is not a problem, PGW livestock manager Joe Higgins said.

But next week could be a different story.

“We have the Monday sheep sale but we haven’t heard anything for that as yet, I guess we may not know what we are doing until Friday,” Higgins said.

A store cattle sale is scheduled for Temuka next Thursday.

“The same will go for that, it’s just wait and see what happens as we await correspondence from head office,” he said.

“But whatever, we will revert to previous level two operations, if we are still in level two, and that includes all the usual restrictions with a few extra processes in place to keep people numbers under control.”

Further down the road in Southland the annual Castlerock cattle sale is set to proceed on Friday.

PGW livestock manager Andrew Martin said while he is still waiting for guidance, he expects the sale will run as previous sales have done under level two restrictions.

“We will be controlling the number of people who turn up, contact tracing and washing our hands; that’s what we are working to and preparing for,” Martin said.

The sale, the first of the spring yearling cattle sales, will offer a mix of 900 exotic and traditional cattle.

“These are all high country bred cattle and it takes time to prepare and get them in so we’re going ahead unless the situation changes and we get guidance otherwise,” he said.

With tighter restrictions placed on meat processing plants in the Auckland region, under alert level three, and likely additional restrictions in plants across the rest of the country, under level two, this may affect processing capacity. 

While there is not expected to be significant impact on processing, Federated Farmers is advising farmers to keep in touch with their industry agents.

“Please keep in close contact with your stock agents and meat buyers if you are looking to supply livestock to processing plants over the next week or so,” Feds general manager policy and advocacy Gavin Forrest said.

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