PROLONGED dry conditions across WA are having a significant impact on the sheep market, with yardings across the State’s saleyards at unusually high numbers.
Farmers have been forced to sell stock as pastures dry up and feed supplies run out following a drier than average autumn and a concerning winter outlook.
Yardings were up by more than 4000 head at the Muchea Livestock Centre last week compared to the same time last year.
At last week's sale at Muchea the yarding was 14,589 sheep, compared to 10,195 on June 14 last year.
Landmark auctioneer Mark Warren said he expected to see nominations continue to rise in the next few weeks.
“At the moment we’ve got lot of leftover crossbred lambs but we’re not seeing the big lines of Merino lambs or ewes that have weaned their lambs just yet,” he said.
“If it doesn’t rain in a couple of weeks that’s when we’ll start to see those numbers rise.
“People will start doing a lot of shearing of Merino wether lambs and get rid of those and see what happens from there.
“If there’s no rain by the end of June that’s when it’s going to get a bit ugly.”
Katanning saleyards manager Rod Bushell said it was a similar situation in the Great Southern, with the Katanning sale yarding for the first week of June up significantly.
“Last week we had 16,720 nominations and this time last year around 10,000, so we’re nearly double what we’ve normally been getting,” he said.
“The numbers are greater for this time of the year than you’d expect, if we’d had normal rains there’s no way we’d be getting nearly 17,000.
“We’ve done it ourselves, we are farmers and we sold 1000 last week that we weren’t keen to sell.”
Mr Bushell said he expected the upward trend would continue if the dry weather endured.
“Last year, in a week’s time we had about 6000 nominations, and then the following week 5000,” he said.
“I bet we get more than 5000 in two weeks time, purely because of the conditions.”
He said an abundance of summer pastures had dried up, with most farmers in the area now feeding sheep.
“It’s pretty ordinary at the minute, I was with a farmer this morning and he hadn’t fed all summer but he’s been feeding for the last month,” Mr Bushell said.
“It was a good summer in that respect, there was feed everywhere two months ago, now there’s feed nowhere.”
Milne Feeds sheep feed specialist Reg Crabb said the company’s pellet production had reached maximum capacity this week as they struggled to keep up with supplementary feed demand from across the State.
“Demand may well exceed our ability to supply everybody that wants pellets because with the price of sheep, everyone wants to keep all their ewes and lambs alive and it is going to be a hard road with the year being so tough,” he said.
“We are selling pellets everywhere across the State, even into places like Bridgetown, Boyup Brook, Donnybrook and Collie because there’s no feed there.
“It is going to be a difficult winter.”
Primaries of WA wool manager Greg Tilbrook said he expected shearing to start early this year as the prolonged dry weather was causing farmers to assess flocks to decide what breeding stock they might be able to carry if there was no break soon.
Because of good wool prices this and the previous season, many farmers had hung on to older ewes and last season’s lamb wethers for the extra wool in their clip while there was plenty of green pick for them earlier in the year.
Most were now reassessing their decision to carry the extra stock purely because of the season, Mr Tilbrook said.
“There’s farmers getting off tractors all over the Central Wheatbelt and looking at their sheep and bringing shearings forward,” he said.
“Dry ewes and wether hoggets that they hung onto to get more condition on them when they had plenty of green pick – but that didn’t happen – are now being assessed as to whether they continue to hang on to them or shear them early and sell them.
“They are still getting good money for shorter wools – 65mm for top making is still bringing $9 to $11 a kilo, and that’s on top of the price they will get for store lambs.
“The other side of the equation is that at the moment grain and lupins are still quite cheap so they can buy in feed and keep the sheep.
“But that all depends on how long the price of grain and lupins stay where they are.”
Moora shearing contractor Rhenice Wilkie confirmed shearing was likely to be early and local farmers were offloading sheep because of the dry.
“They are getting rid of them because they don’t want to fork out for feed,” Ms Wilke said.
“We’ve still got people cropping, but the guys (shearing team) are out working today and tomorrow, and we’ve got lots of bits and pieces coming up (as farmers shear before they sell sheep).
“I reckon we’ll kick off in earnest (annual spring shearings) in four weeks.
“That’s early, we don’t get three months off any more like we used to.”
