BIG beef operations in the State’s north and in southern Queensland are saying they’re fed up with the losses they’re copping from poorly weaned cattle, often bought from some of the most popular weaner sales in the eastern States.
The list includes Sundown Pastoral Company, Kingstown, Upton Pastoral Company, Walcha, and Jackson Agriculture, Armidale, as well as the Toowoomba-based Allied Beef in Qld.
Some have said they plan to target only weaned pens – bidding on unweaned calves only if they need to make up numbers due to the poorer performance of these cattle once they arrive home.
These losses have run into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars through morbidity and mortality from a problem they say can be easily solved.
Sundown's weaning protocol explained
“A lot of calf producers say they can’t afford to wean, but at $100 (premium in Victoria) and $70 (premium in NSW) you can afford to wean,” says Sundown’s manager Matthew Monk.
“As margins have eroded across the board, purchasers can’t afford to have unweaned cattle.”
Six years ago a number of buyers in Victoria walked away from pens of unweaned stock, sending a clear market signal for breeders.
Mr Monk said the majority of breeders in that market had now adopted weaning before selling and he could see the difference in the performance of the calves.
He said unweaned calves from breeders within 100 kilometres from Sundown suffered morbidity and mortality losses as high as 5 per cent, but the Victorian-bred calves through the adoption of yard weaning had dropped to less than 1pc.
Mr Monk wanted to see greater numbers of calves offered as weaned in NSW and said Sundown would be walking away from unweaned pens wherever it could.
In a demonstration of this, the backgrounding powerhouse took just 176 head of calves, all weaned, and including the top price of $695 a head at Armitage and Buckley’s 6th Annual Early Bird Weaner and Breeder Sale last week, where a total of 2700 weaners were offered.
“The quality of the cattle was good – unfortunately we couldn’t buy the numbers because they weren’t weaned,” Mr Monk said.
Armitage and Buckley principal Victor Moar said there were two things he noticed at last week’s sale: “the weaned cattle definitely attracted a premium, as well as the EU (European Union) accredited calves.”
The top two pens were offered by Steve and Leanne Collins of “Brooksby”, Bundarra, the second top pen making $685/hd.
Victorian agent Craig Pertzel, partner in Kerr and Company, Hamilton, said due to the reliance on northern buyers the southern sales had been responsive to customer needs.
This began with soft flooring to alleviate sore feet, then dehorning of Herefords and more recently yard weaning.
He said at least 75pc of the calves through their sales were now yard weaned and while it was hard to measure, he estimated it was bringing the breeders about a 10 cents a kilogram premium.
