It’s that time of year when the spring lambs start to flow. The winter-born lambs are traditionally starting to reach slaughter weights in late October and November, with many coming straight off mum. This year things might pan out a little differently.
The ‘spring flush’ plays out differently across the lamb-producing
regions of the east coast. Figure 1
shows yardings in NSW traditionally peak last week, as we saw with some big numbers
coming in across northern lamb regions. The
second last week of October is a remarkably reliable reference point for NSW
yardings, as the decline through to Christmas is in the order of 40-60%.
For the major swings in spring lamb yardings, we need to look further
south. Figure 2 shows Victorian lamb
yardings more than tripling from September levels to peak in mid to late
December. Much of the lift comes in
southern saleyards at Hamilton and Ballarat, as pastures dry off and lambs are
weaned straight into saleyards.
In South Australia, the yarding trend is similar, although the rise kicks
off, and finishes a few weeks earlier.
The numbers are much smaller in SA, with the peak at 35,000-40,000 head,
rather than the 140,000 head peak in Victoria.
The poor autumn and winter rainfall in Victoria and South Australia is
likely to impact the size of the spring flush.
The most recent Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) sheep distribution
map (read more
here) shows that South-West Victoria has the most sheep by region in the
country.
Southeast SA is the fifth largest region.
In 2021 the two regions held 14% of Australian sheep. Add the Wimmera, North Central Vic and
Corangamite and it’s 23%. Many of these
sheep are producing crossbred lambs.
In looking for a similar year in terms of season, according to many the
last year this bad was in the 1960s. We
don’t have yarding figures back that far, but we do for 2005 when rainfall through
southern Victoria and SE SA was similarly ‘very much below average’ from April
to July.
Figure 2 has the weekly yardings for 2005 included. The spring flush came late and was lower than
the average peak. This looks compelling,
but we need to remember that crossbred sheep made up a smaller proportion of
the flock at that stage.
What does it mean?
We might be seeing the impacts of the season already, with prices rallying despite the strong yardings in NSW. The question now is whether it’s a blip due to delayed southern supply, or if we’ve seen the low and the ESTLI will remain at 800 plus for the rest of spring. We will await the October survey results with interest, as it might answer some of these questions, but for now, growers will be enjoying lifting values.
Key Points
- There is uncertainty with spring lamb supply in Victoria and SA, NSW supply has been tracking as usual.
- Southern lamb supply usually lifts strongly in November to peak in mid-December.
- Finished lamb prices have rallied, and might remain strong through to Christmas.
Click on figure to expand
Click on figure to expand
Click on figure to expand
Data sources: MLA, Mecardo
