The crowd and cattle numbers may have been down at the Gunnedah store sale on Thursday but vendors were still able to achieve some impressive profits.
About 350 head were yarded, mainly cows and calves and female articles, with locals taking the opportunity to cash-in on the market before the next store sale in May.
The standout offering came late in the sale when James and Sonya Hardcastle of Nulla Nulla at North Star offered 46 two-year-old Hereford cross and Droughtmaster/Santa cross heifers pregnancy-tested-in-calf to a low birth weight Texas Angus bull.
Due to calve from May 20, the two lead pens of 30 head made $2300 while the remaining 16 reached $2220.
Mr Hardcastle was full of praise for his father-in-law Kevin Brennan who encouraged the cropping operator to buy in cattle to trade in 2019.
"We paid $252/head for them when we bought them out of Roma straight off their mothers in 2019," Mr Hardcastle said.
"We are absolutely stoked with the result.
"We decided to offer them now as I didn't want to calve them out, cropping is our main enterprise. We love to have cattle when the opportunity arises."
The heifers had been run on buffel since they were calves and offloaded at Gunnedah in the hope of attracting southern interest.
Fleming and Ross agent Tim Walsh opened the sale and said producers were traveling a long way to find store cattle at the moment.
With reports of 60 millimetres of rain at Coonabarabran the night before, prices held firm to other major selling centres.
Of the steers that were on offer a pen of Angus-infused weaners reached the high of $1560 with heavier Santa types making $1535 and European infused weaners making $1525.
Young heifers were scarce with milk-tooth Angus yearlings reaching $1550 and their lighter counterparts to $1480.
A pen of "grass muncher" light weight steers and a heifer made $830 each.
The cow and calf category kicked off with Charolais females and their Angus cross first calves that sold for $3100, heavy framed cows with calves made $2900 while three to eight-year-old Angus cows and calves made $2550.
Read the full report in The Land next week.
Lucy Kinbacher
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
