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.

Had a great experience in Melbourne last Wednesday watching 350 head of Holstein heifers being loaded onto a Qantas 747 freight carrier bound for Hanoi.

Hannaford Stock and Land had been involved in the purchase of a large proportion of these cattle through David Blanch, who did an outstanding job in organising and dealing with the Vietnamese.
The absolute professional organisation of the loading of cattle from midnight, prior to departure, into specially designed wooden crates, which also have internal mats that absorb most of the cattle waste products. These crates are all individually weighed and fed into a computer, which then places them in a strict order that allows for the trimming of the plane through the correct weight distribution. Once the plane arrives, and whilst taking on around 90 tonne of fuel, the crates are loaded through a large cargo bay door, fore and aft sides by scissor lifts. The amount of preparation and organisation that goes into this prior to loading, allows for the cattle to be loaded in approximately 45 minutes. Another interesting statistic that the Loadmaster for the plane told me, was that these planes spend approximately 14 out of every 24 hours in the air, seven days a week. These cattle would be on Vietnamese soil by a little after midnight that night our time.

This particular plane was going from Melbourne to Hanoi, Hanoi to Bangkok, Bangkok to North America, North America to Europe, Europe to Malaya and Malaya to Australia, which was expected to be completed in nine days.

Hasn’t the world become a small place these days………………..

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.