Camera at the Mart: Brennan’s sale sees Blues to €7,000

With weanlings being a strong trade and with fatstock season now under way, optimism was high in Balla Mart on Friday, which saw a packed ringside and car park to rival a bank holiday weanling sale for the 17th annual Walter Brennan in-calf heifer sale drawing crowds both locally and from further afield.

Fifty handpicked heifers passed through the ring under the watchful eye of auctioneer Raymond Clarke, who described the heifers as “one of the best yards of cattle” he had ever seen before the sale commenced.

All 50 heifers were scanned in-calf, with pregnancies not sexed. Heifers were all between six and eight months in-calf, with service sires this year being a mix of sexed and conventional semen from proven easy calving AI Limousin bulls LM2014, EBY, LM7416 and LM4184, with a small number of heifers proving in-calf to a five-star LM2014-sired stock bull.

Heifers were all continental-bred, with the majority consisting of Belgian Blue- and Limousin-crosses, with some pure Limousin and Charolais-cross heifers also in the mix, with a number of SCEP-eligible heifers on sale.

Heifers sold from €2,650 up to a high of €7,000, with the majority of heifers selling for greater than €3,500 at an average price of €3,822 across the 50 lots, with a 100% clearance recorded.

Four heifers sold between €2,650 and €3,000, with 30 heifers selling between €3,000 and €4,000.

A further 11 heifers sold between €4,000 and €5,000, with the remaining three heifers selling between €5,000 and €7,000. Twenty-eight of the heifers were purchased online via Martbids, with one online bidder purchasing five lots, while six heifers in total were sold to Northern Ireland.

Top call on the night was lot 13, a Belgian Blue-cross Limousin heifer served on 6 June to LM2014. After a flurry of bids online and ringside, Clarke’s hammer fell at €7,000 for the powerful black heifer.

A range of roan heifers were available on the night, with many of these commanding the top prices.

Lot 46, a deep red Limousin-cross heifer with a white belly and scanned in-calf to sexed female LM2014 semen was knocked down to a ringside buyer at €6,000, with lot 33, a lightly roaned Limousin-cross, again in-calf to LM2014, selling for €5,900 online.

Some nicer R grading heifers suited to any system offered value for buyers, selling between €2,650 and €3,200, which included some purebred non-registered Limousin types.