THE annual Team Te Mania online commercial female sale ran red-hot on the back of good rains across large tracts of the southern agricultural zone when it offered and sold 743 females last week for a spectacular total of $1.715 million.
The sale hit $2825 twice – for 15 x 2½ yo cows with calves at foot and then for a line of 26 x 2 ½yo cows, PTIC with heifer sexed pregnancies.
Both lines came from Michael and Sallie Carroll’s “Widgeegonga” herd at Derrinallum in Victoria. The Carroll’s sold 50 second, third and fourth calving cows which had been foetal sexed by ultrasound, and drafted into sale lines of heifer pregnancies.
Mike said “selling heifer pregnancies enables us to retain more cows carrying male calves, so we can produce more steers for Rangers Valley who offer a good premium over the going rate for feeder steers”.
He said “it was a very strong sale, and I was pleased to hear that the underbidder on several of our lots purchased all our surplus breeders two years ago”
Team Te Mania director Hamish McFarlane “it was excellent to see these producers rewarded for the genetic gain they have achieved in their commercial herds.”
“Team members are well rewarded by the feedlot industry and backgrounders, and we have often felt the females have been sold short. Its great to see that the message has resonated that breeders with such high genetic merit, backed by EBVs and carcase data, provide an enormous head-start in breeding cattle for the premium market.
A large volume of the offering sold to northern NSW, with others to the Mansfield area and the western district.
Mumbannar producers Sue and Steve Brain put 221 EU-accredited cattle through the sale for a gross of $520,525 and average of $2,355.31.
Steve said the results were “a reward for 20 years in the Team Te Mania program using only the top 10 per cent of the industry’s genetics”.
And he also believed the buyer profile of his cattle was confirmation his own breeding program was heading in the right direction.
“Sue and I were pleased to see so many of our cattle going to repeat purchasers and the competition that helped create in the sale,” Steve added.
Colin and Karen Henke of Lakala, Mumbannar, also sold a large draft of 169 head, achieving an excellent average of $2,183
Jack and Jenny Roxburgh of Coomete, Hexham sold a line of 86 x 17-18 month heifers, PTIC, for an average of $2,512, and a further 20 x 30-42 cows, PTIC for an average of $2,775.
