Mild winter weather throughout the country means feed utilisation has been high but those conditions also meant crops were still growing, exacerbating surplus winter feed following the reduction of dairy grazers.
That had forced farmers onto the cattle market with South Island prices for a 400kg animal between $2.85 and $3.05 a kilogram liveweight, 10c to 15c above the corresponding time last year.
Rural Livestock’s mid and south Canterbury livestock manager Simon Cox said with the wide use of fodder beet and the liveweight gains possible from feeding the crop and fewer cattle on the market, there was an abundance of winter crop.
The prolonged drought in north Canterbury had also reduced the number of animals available on the market.
Farmers were increasingly looking to improve cashflow and cattle were ideal for that, he said.
PGG Wrightson’s livestock manager Peter Moore said the growing demand was reflective of a general shortage of beef cattle at a time of optimistic prospects for export beef prices given the Australian herd had also declined in size.
That demand in New Zealand was driving interest in four-day-old beef-cross calves supplied from the dairy industry.
“The traditional beef industry is capped at a certain number and if people want to have more beef cattle, the only way to get it is out of the dairy industry.”
The nation’s beef herd had steadily fallen for the last decade in part because of sheep farmers reducing cattle numbers but also the lingering effects of two years of drought in Canterbury, Moore said.
But the number of beef breeding herds had stabilised in the past year in response to demand for animals and optimism about export beef prices.
