The price has been pulled down for beef in Scotland again with abattoirs quoting £3.68-£3.75/kg for R grade cattle. This comes after weeks of reducing capacity due to corona virus outbreaks among staff.

The official Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) price for R grading steers for the week ending 5 December was £3.89/kg down 5p/kg on the week. Same grade heifers fell 3p/kg to £3.89/kg and young bulls were down 4p/kg to £3.71/kg.

Finished cows were reported by AHDB at £2.37/kg for an 0-4 which is down 4/kg.

Lawrie and Symington sold 238 Store Cattle at their final sale of 2020 this week which averaged £2.17/kg for steers, £2.13/kg for heifers and dairy bullocks average £1.67/kg. United Auctions sold 453 store cattle last Wednesday which averaged £2.20/kg for steers, £2.10/kg for heifers and £1.68/kg for dairy steers. Thainstone sold 413 stores which average £2.22/kg for steers and £2.21 for heifers.

Abattoirs pay more

Despite any clarity of the lamb exports in the new year some abattoirs put the lamb price up this week to £4.75/kg for R grade up to 21kg.

The official AHDB price for R grade lambs was £4.81/kg which is a jump of 5p/kg. Across GB 47,000 lambs were killed which is down 3,000 on the week.

According to AHDB clean sheep slaughter since the beginning of June had been running ahead of last year, such that at the end of August about 270,000 head more had been killed this year than last. Since then however, slaughter has been behind year earlier levels, to the point where the kill since the start of June is now only 70,000 head more than in 2019. The 2020 lamb crop is thought to be of a similar size to the 2019 crop.

The live trade continues its strong trade at Monday’s sales as Ayr mart reported a 2p/kg rise to £2.18/kg, Lanark dipped 4p/kg to £2.17/kg and St Boswells stayed at £2.20/kg. Last week’s prime lamb sale at Thainstone averaged £2.10/kg up 3p/kg and at United Auctions the price dropped 7p/kg to £2.09/kg.

Lambs average £70/head

There was a big sale at Caledonian mart in Stirling this week of 9,232 store lambs and feeding ewes. Beltex lambs averaged £94.80/head which was up £10.50 on the year. Thainstone sold 1,500 store lambs which averaged £70.33 which is down £8/head.

Meanwhile, according to BCMS figures the GB cattle population stood at just under 8 million head, 2% lower than the same point a year ago. This continues the trend seen over the last two years.

Within this, the number of all cattle under 30 months fell by 1% to just under 5 million head, with the greatest decline seen in dairy males. The breeding herd contracted at a slightly greater rate, down 3% to 2.9 million head.