While there was not much change in cattle prices at the Killarney Auction Mart at its Jan. 22 sale, the number of head sold was slightly more than triple the previous week.
There were 1,255 cattle auctioned on Jan. 22, compared to 410 the previous Monday.
“Some of those yearlings bought last summer are starting to move,” said Killarney’s Allen Munroe, noting there remained a something of bottleneck in cattle moving through the entire system.
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Despite that issue, he said the number of cattle to continue coming to auction is set to remain quite strong for the time being.
“January and February are fairly busy. There was a lot of calves sold last fall, but the guys who background continue to do so,” Munroe said, adding some caution.
“What we mostly saw last fall was someone selling 60 per cent of their calves, sold 90 per cent. Grass calves could be in short supply this spring because there were so many sold last fall.”
While most prices for feeder and slaughter cattle at Killarney remained the same or moves a few dollars either way, there were a couple of exception. Feeder steers weighing 600 to 700 pounds fetched $340 to $365 per hundredweight compared to $320 to $350 at their Jan. 15 auction.
Most notable were the 700-800 feeder steers, which brought in $310 to $340/cwt. on Jan. 22 versus the $285 to $317 the week before. Among the slaughter cattle there was only a minute difference from week to week in which the low end for D1-D2 cows dipped $5/cwt. Otherwise, prices were the same.
“We’re better than we were in early December,” Munroe emphasized.
The week of Jan. 19 to 25 marked the first time in more than a month that all eight Manitoba cattle auctions had sales. Altogether, 8,054 slaughter and feeder cattle were sold, with Ste. Rose leading the way with 2,280 head. On the low end were Brandon and Grunthal at 192 and 158, respectively.
