00:00A strong sale equal to a fortnight ago. The rain throughout the area and in the
00:06Gippsland wider area, significantly more rain in East Gippsland than what was
00:11received locally, has pushed up the price again of the young cattle. A fortnight
00:16ago things were teetering, the season was looking a bit dry and looked like it was
00:20going to peter out quickly, but the rain has restored confidence and we're right
00:25now down here for at least another month. Doesn't matter what the weather does now
00:28for a month, but we will need a bit more rain going forward. The immediate effect
00:33on the market was confidence restored, prices that looked like they were going
00:37to dwindle and start to go down because of oversupply. Numbers have tightened up a
00:42little bit, prices have stabilised. We're back to where we were, not at
00:46the dizzy heights of August, but we're certainly back into the mid-September
00:50prices. There were feedlot operators, there were graziers, there were agents all
00:54securing cattle for their clients. Quite a large crowd in attendance.
00:59What we're seeing is the heavy steers not so much going on feed as they were back in
01:05May and June and that price has eased back somewhat. Our 500 kilo steers back in
01:10June were making $6. Now they're sort of around $5.20 to $5.30. There were some
01:16sales of heavier cattle that were under $5 a kilo, but not much, which is
01:20equivalent to what they're making in the prime sale. And then as your price, as
01:26your weight went down, your price went up, but not significantly. So when you're
01:30into the sort of early to mid fours, the price was sort of between $5.25 to
01:36about $5.40. And then once you got down to sort of $300, there were a few sales
01:41heading towards $6. I didn't see anything eclipse $6, but still very satisfactory. And
01:47now that springtime's here, there's confidence back. And the other thing we've
01:51seen is the cow market stabilised this week as well. It did drop a little back
01:56about $0.20 a fortnight ago, but it's stabilised again. So that's all good, but
02:00looking good going forward. But a bit more rain in a month's time will ensure that
02:04everyone gets hay and you know, hay in the shed is money in the bank.
