It’s been another steady week for the mart trade, with good weather having a settling effect on the trade.

The Ploughing meant some marts were smaller than usual last week, but speaking to mart managers around the country, they aren’t expecting any big glut of numbers over the next few weeks.

October is traditionally a big month for marts, with special shows and sales of weanlings taking place in a lot of marts over the next few weeks.

Store cattle numbers have been very steady over the last month and managers have said they would expect numbers to tail off in the next couple of weeks as farmers offload cattle before winter housing starts.

Other years may have seen some farmers house animals and feed some meal and silage before sale, whereas this year concentrate prices at €470/t will mean a lot of these farmers will sell straight off grass.

Weanling trade

The weanling trade has shown a remarkable resilience, flying in the face of a sluggish beef trade and high grain prices.

Farmer feeders and larger bull feeders have been driving the trade over the last six weeks and looking at last week’s MartBids analysis, this trend looks set to continue.

The dry cow trade also remains very solid, with wholesalers here very active for top-quality heavy cows with good flesh cover.

In many cases, these cows are worth more than prime heifers on a per-kg basis, which really demonstrates what is driving the beef trade at the moment and that’s manufacturing beef.

Mart managers had been reporting big numbers of dry cows moving through marts in the last two months, as suckler farmers took the opportunity of high prices to cull empty cows. While this may be perceived as a negative for some, breeding heifer and in-calf heifer sales have never been better, with suckler farmers having the confidence to go back out and reinvest the cull cow money in replacement stock.

Suckler support

It will be interesting to see if this week’s announcement of further support for the suckler cow in 2023 will stem the flow to the cull cow ring and steady up numbers.

Plainer dairy-cross cattle appear to be the only negative in the trade at the moment.

Lighter Aberdeen Angus and Hereford cattle have seen an easier demand over the last two weeks, with these longer-keep cattle back as much as 20c/kg in some cases.

Database analysis

Taking a look at this week’s MartBids analysis table, we see both the heifer and bullock trade remaining pretty steady, with just very small changes up and down across a number of categories of stock.

The lower-quality end is under the most pressure, with the bottom third of bullocks in the 400kg to 500kg weight category, which would contain a lot of Friesian bullocks, coming in at €1.78/kg this week.

Lower-quality heifers in the same category, which would be mostly Aberdeen Angus and Hereford dairy-cross cattle, came in at €2.02/kg this week.

The weanling trade is very solid, with a lot of green arrows across the board this week. Top-end bull weanlings in the 300kg to 400kg category came in at €2.93/kg, while top-end heifers in the same weight bracket hit €2.80/kg.