Stock entries at yesterday's Feilding Prime Stock Sale continued their seasonal decline, and reasonable numbers of prime lambs would have been withheld for this week's Feilding and Marton Hogget Fair.
Long gone are the days when this hogget fair would have attracted two days of up to 20,000 hoggets on both days, which only illustrates the drop in sheep numbers but also shows that the season has been difficult.
The reduced entries for this coming hogget fair also illustrate just how good this Monday prime sale has generally been for prime lamb vendors. Monday entries have been relatively high all season, thus reducing the numbers left for a hogget fair.
This particular prime lamb sale was very strong and cents/kg levels reached a new high for this season yesterday. Only around 1000 prime hoggets gave the main buyers little to fight over.
Top price yesterday was $184 for 42 male lambs from JJ Farms, and Glen Hill sold 43 rather prime ewe lambs for $179. While these individual prices were not as high as last week, overall the cents/kg levels increased 10-20 cents for all weight ranges.
Nearly 300 store lambs sold at firm levels.