The new dairy season approaches, and that means May is the month to tidy up the last of the cull dairy cows before Moving Day.
May 2024 will go down in the books as the busiest on record at the Temuka saleyards in terms of throughput of cull cows, as the four Monday prime and boner sales of May each pushed past 1000 head.
By month end, a total of just over 4100 cows had gone past the rostrum at these sales, the highest May tally in AgriHQ records, which date back to 2010.
This just nudged out 2020, and far exceeds the total tally average since 2010 of 2700 head.
The consistently high volume reflects the success of the competitive environment at auction, one which more farmers are happy to take advantage of.
Within the total of 4100, dairy cows made up 92%, with the balance beef cows. Since 2010, cull dairy cows have commonly made up 80%-93% of the tallies, so this year’s levels are relative.
Price has been one attraction of the auction process and at the beginning of April most boner cows were trading at $1.40-$1.54/kg, which was on par with last year.
Boner prices closely follow the manufacturing cow schedule movement and currently, auction prices for Friesian and Friesian-cross cows have lifted to $1.60-$1.73/kg. That was a 7c/kg fall from the previous week, though much of that can be attributed to the high volume.
Price levels have followed a very similar level to last year, and still are doing so, though they are trading 15c/kg up on the five-year average.
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