Merlewood Angus doubled returns for the top priced bull at the stud’s recent autumn bull sale in South Gippsland.
Courtesy of Weekly Times by Madeleine Stuchbery
A TOTAL clearance and a top price double last year were the highlights of the recent Merlewood Angus autumn bull sale at Mirboo North in South Gippsland.
All 36 bulls sold, with the best money of $21,000 paid for Merlewood Innovation Q150 by major buyer Belfrage Pastoral at Bass.
Last year’s top-priced bull sold for $10,500.
Merlewood Angus co-stud principal Anne Marie Barrow said the sale was buoyed by a mixture of “old and new clients” servicing the greater Gippsland region and Victoria’s High Country.
“Half of our clients were repeat buyers and the other half were new, which is nice,” Ms Barrow said.
Ms Barrow said new volume buyers included the Brookville Angus stud at Swifts Creek in the East Gippsland High Country.
“They bought about seven bulls on the day, and that obviously took out a large part of the sale,” she said.
Merlewood recorded an average price across the sale of $7639, an increase on the 2020 average price of $5320.
Ms Barrow attributed the lift in prices to a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 hampering the annual sale, as well as 12 months of strong cattle prices.
“Last year, because of COVID-19, we just went online, and that was the driving factor behind prices last year,” Ms Barrow said.
“At the end of the day, farmers like to come and view the cattle. Because the price of cattle is where it is, farmers do have the money in their pockets to buy a better-quality bull. Last year, with COVID-19 and then drought before that, they made do because it was a tight season. A lot of people coming back into the market now are in need of fresh genetics, and people are restocking and bringing numbers back up.”