The return of rain to drought-impacted parts of the country had a positive impact on the lamb trade in Macroom Mart on Wednesday last for the Cork mart’s weekly sheep sale.

A recovery in grass growth in the southeast gave some buyers there the confidence to buy stock again and this had a positive impact in the trade.

This resulted in a full clearance of the 1,752 sheep that were on offer.

Store lambs were the largest class of stock present with 1,400 going through the ring.

The general run of lowland lambs weighing around the 30kg mark were making €3.30/kg to €4/kg, with a shake more available for ewe lambs on occasion.

For hill lambs, those from 22kg to 30kg tended to sell for between €2.90/kg to €3.30/kg, with a few lots exceeding this price range.

Commenting after the sale, yard manager at Macroom, Denis Kelleher said: “Trade was up this week and we had increased buyers for grass. The last couple of weeks we haven’t had grass and now it’s there and those buyers are back. They would normally be here with the last few weeks but they couldn’t buy because of the drought on their farms. They’re all appearing now and that helped.

"We had buyers, from east Cork, Tipperary, Kilkenny and Wexford, so they’re back in the game after a hard summer.

Quality sheep

"We had an excellent yard of quality sheep and we had extra buyers and it made things much dearer. A 33kg to 34kg lamb, they’d run into anything from €90 to €110 with their weight. The hill lamb was increased too.

"We had a top of a pen of Swaledale ram lambs weighing 36kg that sold for €122, which was a great price for them.

The ewe lamb price has held all along as there were farmers buying them but there were people that fatten sheep buying ewe lambs this week."