Interesting browsing through the latest Land newspaper that Tamworth Council has now approved the building of a new Regional Livestock Marketing Centre, as Saleyards are now called. These yards have been designed to process up to 130,000 head of cattle and 355,000 head of sheep and lambs annually. When one looks at the map, and sees the placement of similar yards throughout Victoria and Qld, you can see why Tamworth is of strategic importance. They are all placed on or near major highways for transport and in easy striking distance to most major meat processing industries. The big issue these days with older yards is the OH&S requirements for safety, not only for workers, but also for the general public. The other issue that now has to be strongly considered is to design yards that relieve stress to the animals. In all these new designs, things like bruising and “yard flow “ for the ongoing transport considerations are also of major importance.

One can see the obvious benefits of large numbers to these yards for buyers, which means that they don’t have to travel as far, or as often, to pick up their quotas for the week. We certainly hope that this doesn’t mean a constant draw away from smaller centres because of lack of stock numbers and buyers.

I get the sneaking suspicion that if the last week has been any indication, we could be in for a COOL winter this year. For those of us who have been here for a few years, it reminds me very much of the mid fifties when outside water lines were frozen and you could not get a cup of tea before 10am in the morning. From a stock point of view, due to the heavy frosts that we have received, it will mean a real loss of feed value in our general pastures.

As a general management plan, this is where we start to sort the “maybes” out from the rest of the herd if we are fully stocked. Stock such as broken mouth cows, cows not in calf and any leftover weaners should be removed from the property. The money received from these sales can help to pay for the supplements or maybe the purchase of some calved heifers in early spring, thereby keeping your production numbers up. The overriding factors in this equation are if you are going to feed supplements, which means an extra cost for the next two to three months, it needs to be applied to the cattle that are going to perform for you.

The general rule of thumb is that July, August and well into September are our toughest months and that is the period when cattle will certainly go backwards if not looked after.