Brad Delgaty’s tenure as the new manager of Heartland Livestock Services in Brandon could not have had a better start.
Hired to the position last month, Delgaty’s first order of business was to bring HLS Brandon’s regular weekly auction sales back to Tuesdays, ending a short-lived excursion to Friday sales. So far, the schedule change has paid dividends, as evidenced by the 1,843 cattle going through the rings on Oct. 31.
“(It’s been) really good. Really responsive,” said Delgaty, whose family also raises horses near Minnedosa.
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“The producers have really responded (to) going back so they can deliver on Sundays. A lot of them have help on the weekends or they work during the week. We had just around 1,900 this week with the regular sale and the pre-sort (sale) so that’s pretty good.”
With the fall run in full swing, 15,894 cattle were sold in weekly regular sales at Manitoba cattle auction sites during the week ended Nov. 2, despite a substantial snowfall in the final week of October. By comparison, 14,691 head were sold the previous week.
The weather “would definitely help with the numbers, just because of the snow. Guys have to start taking cows off of pasture and when they do that, the calves come to town,” Delgaty said. “Our (calf) numbers are climbing back up.”
There were nearly 600 more cattle at the Oct. 31 sale than the previous week in Brandon, and prices for lightweight feeder steers moved above $500 per hundredweight. Some lightweight heifers also sold for more than $400/cwt. and slaughter prices increased for D1 and D2 cows as well as mature bulls.
“Last week, we’ve seen (prices) everywhere were under pressure. But this week, they’ve bounced back and they’re fully steady,” Delgaty added.
Cattle prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange recovered from a sharp one-day price drop on Oct. 23. The December live cattle contract closed at US$184.675/cwt. on Nov. 2, a gain of $5.35 from one week earlier. The January feeder cattle contract ended Nov. 2 at $242.175/cwt., up $7.10 from the previous week.
Delgaty said the cattle sold were moving into Eastern and Western Canada, with all classifications in high demand. He doesn’t anticipate too many changes to prices over the next week or so.
“So far, everything seems like it’s going to be very steady from what it was this week. Next week should be very comparable to this week,” he said.
