Hear from Michael Unthank at the first Wodonga weaner sale of the year. Video by Stephen Burns.
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00:00 Are you partnered with an RMA Network independent livestock and property agent?
00:20 We're here with the first day of the four days of weaner sales at Barnawatha, Madonga.
00:27 We're here with Michael Lunthink from Brian Lunthink Rural of Madonga.
00:31 Michael, it was a good start to a series of weaner sales here today.
00:36 Yeah, I'd say it was a very good start.
00:39 We anticipated it probably not being as good as that, but we're very, very pleased with
00:44 the result at the end of the day.
00:45 We had about a bit over 5,000 cattle here.
00:47 We started off on our oldest steers.
00:49 They were sort of spring drop last year steers, and they were all making around that $3 a
00:54 kilo for about 400 to 450 or 60 kilos.
00:58 So that was a good start to the job.
01:00 The feedlotters were pretty prominent there, mainly northern feedlotters.
01:04 We ran into our EU steer calves, and that was a very good run of those, a couple of
01:09 lanes of them.
01:10 And they were all making up between 320 and 350 cents a kilo.
01:13 All the calves in that section were weighing between 300 and up to 400 kilos.
01:19 That was a good result as well.
01:21 And then into the bulkier calves, which we had a good run of them, not many lighter weight
01:25 calves in, but most of the calves between 300 and 360 or 70.
01:30 And they were all making up to $3.40 a kilo and down to about 320 a kilo.
01:35 So that was a good result.
01:36 There was a featured line of little lightweight calves which sold particularly well.
01:41 I mean, they closed up to close to $4 a kilo, but they were 250, 60 kilos and a very good
01:45 line of them.
01:46 But other than that, there weren't too many of those sort of weighted cattle here.
01:49 The steers held up very well and probably would have been a good 20 or 30 cents better
01:54 than our sales prior to Christmas, which is encouraging.
01:56 It looks good.
01:57 A lot of northern competition, a lot of faces we haven't seen before and a lot of faces
02:02 we have seen here at Barnawatha.
02:03 So it was a good confidence sale, especially with the steers.
02:07 We ran onto the heifers, and the old of the heifers, there was a particularly couple of
02:11 good lines of heifers that you could take on for breeders, and they sold particularly
02:14 well.
02:15 They were able to ride over that $3 mark, well into the 350, 60 for one particular line.
02:21 But they were excellent heifers, making up to about $15, $60 for a 385, 90 kilo cattle.
02:27 That was a very good sale.
02:29 But when you got back into the run of the mill sort of heifers for your feeders and
02:32 your grass fatteners, they were all trading around at that $2, 50 to 2, sort of 60 or
02:37 70, which held up right through to sale, really, right down to 260, 70 kilo heifers at the
02:44 end.
02:45 So it was a very good result for a big number of cattle and a good big crowd of buyers here.
02:51 A lot of competition from, as I say, the north, and a few from our area as well, which had
02:57 a bit of rain.
02:58 So yeah, all in all, it's a good one to have over for the start of the year, and I think
03:00 it's bounced off very, very well.
03:01 very well.