Livestock and property agent Cyril Close from TopX Roma shares insights on the Roma cattle market, including rain-affected supply, stock origins, and a positive summer outlook.
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00:00Hello, welcome to AgriCast. We're looking at the cattle market and particularly up in
00:12Roma. Cyril Close is with us, Livestock and Property Agent at Topex Roma. Hi Cyril, thanks
00:19for joining us from your property. Whereabouts are you?
00:21Yeah, Kirsten, today, luckily enough to be on our property, which is 60km north of Roma,
00:26doing the nice green grass and the fat cattle. Sorry to interrupt you while living the dream,
00:32but I wanted to check in on Roma salyards. How was it looking yesterday?
00:36Yeah, it was another strong market again, a bit over 4,000 head of cattle yarded, been
00:40getting some yardings that have rain affected and we've been drawing for quite a few more
00:45cattle than that, but we're fortunate enough that there's storms in the district and that's
00:50been restricting supply on a weekly basis at the minute, which is a good problem.
00:54So what's the current state of the market?
00:56For the buyers, they've got to adjust their rates on a weekly basis at the moment. In
01:00the selling side of it, it's in a very strong position and it's getting probably better
01:04each week over the last month. And that's mainly due to the rainfall falling around
01:08the districts to grow the beautiful grass.
01:11Now Roma's a pretty massive salyard in an Australian context. Where do the cows come
01:17from?
01:18Yeah, we're lucky enough to grow them from lots of different states. We get them out
01:21of Victoria, New South Wales. Cattle come from South Australia, the Northern Territory
01:26and then we have a big footprint here in the Marino and Warrego and further west into the
01:31Western parts of Queensland.
01:32Well, it's been quite dry in parts of SA and Victoria. What's the quality of the stock
01:38looking like?
01:39Yeah, the cattle have been making the trip up from down that way. They are lighter in
01:42condition but they're sending them this way for a better market and where the feed is.
01:46Even though they're a little bit lighter, they've been travelling very well and then
01:49they get here and the new buyers take them out to greener pastures, I suppose you could
01:52call it. They'll get a lot of upside in that and the rain we've had now is setting up the
01:57district for a great summer.
01:59What are you thinking about for the next season? How's it shaping up?
02:03If we can get some more rain throughout the December period, there's only a handful of
02:07weeks left to go obviously till the end of the year. But if that can continue into the
02:10January period and we don't get too much heat, which obviously we will get heat, but if it
02:15doesn't burn the feed off, it's probably setting up for as good a summer as we've seen
02:19for quite a number of years.
02:21Now is it finished for the year at Roma Salyards and when does it start up again next year?
02:24Yeah, so we've got one more sale scheduled for the 17th of December and then we kick
02:28back into gear on the 14th of January in 2025.
02:32Cyril Close, thank you so much for joining us.