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.

Further to the devastating news from Japan in relation to the foot and mouth disease outbreak, some of the figures that are emerging are quite startling.
Over 200,000 animals have been destroyed since March, with a 150,000 of those being pigs. Apparently one of the country’s prized Wagyu herds is still intact. This certainly brings back the absolute need for our quarantine authorities and federal government to lift their game to the highest priority. One would not wish to think about the devastation that could be reaped upon our National herd. Just the economic cost, with figures between 9 and 12 billion, plus the International reputation to our clean, green, disease free food would be irreparable.
The fact that the Government is refusing to provide an additional $260 million per year, recommended by it’s own quarantine review panel, makes you wonder where their real priorities are in this time of throwing money around in all directions…….except ours.

Interesting report out this week, via the Rabobank senior analysis about how China has now become the largest market for meat in the world, and demand is expected to rise over the next ten years. Probably a thing that we haven’t all realised is that China is the largest producer of sheep meat and one of the largest producers of beef, dwarfing Australia’s production in both. This is also of interest in that it only represents 14% of their total meat consumption, therefore making it a niche market in China. This niche market runs at 2.5 million tonnes of beef and 2 million tonnes of sheep meat. Local supply is also growing within China due to tax exemptions, input subsidies and import tariffs.

But recently, due to reduced Government support, uncertain markets and rising input prices, has seen production of sheep and cattle become unattractive in China.

This has a fairly familiar ring about it, and is certainly unusual coming from that corner of the world.

Looks like the old saying that “One Man’s bad luck is another persons gain”, might come true as a possible blessing for the Australian Cattle Industry.
The word out of America is that cattle numbers have dropped significantly over there and therefore this adds a bit of light to the hamburger meat job. The other news that may have a great affect on our export to Japan is the outbreak this week of foot and mouth disease. Reports coming out of Japan are suggesting that it is almost impossible, at this stage to control. It was detected mainly in Wagyu herds and will obviously mean a further opening for our high-end quality beef cuts. This is quite significant with Japan being one of our major Beef trading partners. I am sure that there will be quite a few cattlemen who will be quietly confident that this might put a bit more substance in the current market.