Falling cattle prices and available feed impacting producers retaining stock

In recent months, restocker prices have fallen further than prime or processor prices in recent times.

Frame Rural Agencies' principal Beau Frame recently placed 103 eight-month-old Santa and Santa cross weaner steers, weighing 200kg, on AuctionsPlus on behalf of a Blackall producer.

They were passed in at 295c/kg or $765 per head.

In comparison, Mr Frame said the same type of weaners in 2022, weighing a fraction heavier at 300kg, made 620c/kg to return $1750/hd.

"The price has nearly halved in the last eight weeks," he said.

Mr Frame said there has been a lot of hesitance from producers to offload restocker cattle, even after weaning.

"They're waiting to see what happens with the price and using the time to put a bit of weight into them," he said.

"The heifer weaner market has seen the biggest change, with recent prices across the state putting them between 160 to 230c/kg.

"At Blackall, we're now only offering a sale once a month but we've been trying to go every fortnight."

"The only thing that will change this is rain."

According to online livestock marketing platform AuctionsPlus, their commercial cattle listings last week stayed stable at 9712 head, while clearance slipped 6 pc to 40pc and value over reserve rose to $74/head.

AuctionsPlus general manager of network, Paul Holm, Toowoomba, said their market share had not changed 'significantly' in recent months.

Mr Holm acknowledged they were seeing a lower throughput of listings on their online livestock marketing platform, similar to saleyards across the state.

"At AuctionsPlus, we do internal research and we benchmark ourselves against total yardings auctioned livestock in Australia," he said.

"I would say the retention piece for most producers in central and North Queensland could be a combination of factors, (a) the price is not great, and (b) maybe they've got plenty of feed.

"They might also have some tax credits left over from the last few years perhaps that they can draw on just to get the cattle heavier."

Mr Holm said the market disruption with Indonesia would likely have had a negative effect on the market in northern and central Queensland.

"September has been a challenging month, whether it's the prospects of an El Nino, the depressed livestock market, or the potential market outage with Indonesia," he said.

"There's been some processing capacity issues, no doubt about that and sourcing labour shortages in all of the meat works in Australia has also been challenging."