Newsletter for the week ending 14 November

Welcome to new Full member Anthony Zeller of Goomburra, QLD.

The Dalby female sale was fairly tough with only 50% of the 22 females offered selling. Top price was $2750 for a cow and calf offered by David Blake of the Little River Stud at Oakey, QLD.

Tamworth saleyard "buzzed" when a 7 year old Limousin cow weighing 750 kg sold for 186.2 c/kg or $1396 last week. The vendors were John and Helene Rae of the Dry Creek Limousin Stud at Manilla. This would have to be close to a national record for a cull cow.

The following is quoted directly from Mike Harvey's "On the Catwalk" column in this weeks' Land.

This must also be some sort of record and quite a trade-in for their next Limo bull.

Greg and Joan Stevens report the sale of five pure Limousin heifers PTIC for prices ranging from $1000 to $1800 to a commercial breeder at Cowra, NSW. The breeder has used Limousin bulls previously and now wants to run commercial pure bred Limousin females provided they are docile.

In calf heifers at 10,000gns ($26,000) and 6,000gns (15,700) respectively led a strong sale for Limousin females at the British Limousin Cattle Society's annual Red Label Derby Sale at Carlisle on 7th November.

Sixty-Two of the seventy-seven lots offered were sold for a gross of 120,000 Pounds. Full details of the sale are available on the BLS website www.limousin.co.uk

The decision to implement a trial for a risk based tading system to allow cattle from "beef only" herds in Victoria and Tasmania to be sold into the protected zones of NSW and Queensland has generally been welcomed by the industry.

Previously, Victorian and Tasmanian herds have had to have a check test or be in the Market Assurance Program to sell breeding cattle into the protected zone. To meet the requirements to sell in this new category the vendor must provide a vendor declaration that the herd of origin has had no contact with non Market Assurance Program accredited dairy cattle for the previous five years and the cattle must have NLIS tags for traceback purposes.

Herds which have been classified as infected, suspect or restricted do not qualify.

Herds that are already in the MAP provide a higher level of assurance than the untested "beef only" herds which will enable them to sell to MN1, MN2 and MN3 herds around Australia. It is not clear if the "beef only" category will be available at our National Sale on 30th April 2004.

I will be attending the Cattle Council Meeting in Perth on Monday and Tuesday of next week representing the Australian Registered Cattle Breeders' Association on the issue of financial assistance for beef herds found or suspected of being infected with BJD.

I am hopeful it will be the final step in convincing Cattle Council to agree to utilise some of the $4 million that has been collected into a BJD fund via the cattle transaction levy to provide financial assistance to the small number of infected beef herds to help them eradicate the disease.

This has been a long running ARCBA project because of the particular hardship caused to stud herds found to be infected with BJD. ALBS is paid a consultancy fee for my time working on this project.

I am able to regularly report sale toppers from Wodonga on the NSW/Vic border because apart from being the largest cattle selling centre in Victoria, they are one of the few saleyards which reports the breed in their sale reports in their local paper.

This is the time of year when the autumn born milk vealers start to hit the market in Wodonga.

In last weeks' sale 9 of the 11 top priced pens of steer vealers were reported as Limo or Limo X ranging in price from 210 c/kg down to 202.6 c/kg. Top priced pen was 3 steer vealers at 360kg @ 210 c/kg or $756.

The five top priced pens of heifer vealers were also reported as Limo or Limo X with the top price per head 376kg @ 186.6 c/kg = $702.

I often wonder what the other breed is when high prices are reported for Angus X, Hereford X etc.

Yours in Limousin

Alex McDonald