Competition heated up at saleyards last week as buyers realised the opportunities open to them with prices at lower levels.
The Eastern States Trade Lamb Indicator (ESTLI) jumped 56 cents or 8 per cent on the week to 745c per kilogram, carcase weight (cwt).
In the West, trade lambs also improved, up 33c to 514c/kg cwt.
The national restocker lamb price lifted 94c or 17pc to finish at 654/kg cwt.
At Wagga Wagga on Thursday, feedlot and restocker buyers collectively drove restocker prices to a 41pc or 267c/kg cwt premium on the national price.
Heavy lamb prices in Victoria operated at a 5pc premium to the national average with strong sale results in Bendigo, Ballarat and Horsham.
Coming into spring however, industry experts said the seasons, both past and present, will play a major role in the market handling the predicted flood of lambs.
Nutrien Ag Solutions livestock development manager for Victoria's south east region Ron Rutledge said the underlying causes to the recent turbulent ride can be attributed to last year's buoyant spring, exacerbated by some unplanned uncertainty.
"Last spring was so phenomenal, it allowed producers to keep stock because there was surplus feed," Mr Rutledge said.
"All those lambs have been trickling forward since January, we got to the propitious part of the year where it started to get cold and wet. A lot of the producers would normally exit those lambs, but there was abnormal numbers kept."
Injected into this, Mr Rutledge said, was sinking confidence caused by the threat of foot and mouth disease and extreme weather patterns.
"It got very cold and wet through some of the southern precinct and it got a little dry in parts of the northern precinct which cumulated to a perfect storm. The reaction was everyone wanted to move all at once," he said.
"Processors were still trying to find their feet with staffing schedules and it culminated into where we are today."
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Yet Mr Rutledge believes industry is over the worst of the processor backlog, having cleared a lot of stock out in the last month.
...one has confidence we have learnt a bit over the last few weeks that if we do start flooding facilities, the cause and effect is there with the supply and demand curve
- Ron Rutledge
And he has confidence prices will begin to rebound going into spring, and things will settle down entering the new selling season.
"Usually we will see an epicentre start to form late September, late October, with a lot of lambs coming forward," he said.
"But one has confidence we have learnt a bit over the last few weeks that if we do start flooding facilities, the cause and effect is there with the supply and demand curve," Mr Rutledge said.
Seasonality is also predicted to dictate markets.
A wet spring in key southern lamb areas would be likely to keep back some of the supply of store lambs and add to the supply of finished lambs down the track.
Anecdotal reports are surfacing from Victoria and Tasmania that lambs haven't been born yet, while lambs in western NSW are about to enter the market.
And livestock agents have reported the expected new season flush of lambs from Dubbo and Wagga Wagga will be four to six-weeks behind.
"The organisation of big floods of numbers might be more spaced out than we have seen over recent years," Mr Rutledge said.
"This will allow processors to handle some big numbers as well as traders.
"Traders have just washed out the last of the old lambs and they now need to reboot and go again."