THE last Wangaratta monthly store sale of 2023 confirmed a growing trend in the cattle market to close out the year.

Some 850 head were auctioned off at the Wangaratta Livestock Exchange on the December 1 morning, with cow and calves going for an average of $3.56/kg, heifers at $2.44/kg and steers for $2.81/kg.

Corcoran Parker cattle agent Reiley Murtagh said the market has become a lot livelier and expects the upward trend to continue.

“What it’s mainly driven by is northern rain...it's their wet season at the minute and they're getting very good summer pastures up there which has pushed them to start buying cattle,” he said.

“Even in our area there probably wasn’t the confidence due to what the market was doing, but everyone still had a good season and now the confidence is back and it’s making everyone eager again to keep buying cattle.”

Feature seller of the sale on Friday was Michael Purcell and his complete herd dispersal of 50x50 Angus cows at six to seven years old and two to three month old calves with pure Coonemara bloodlines.

Mr Purcell was the farm manager at a 300 acre property in Yarck for 10 years which has been sold by the property owners.

He attended the sale with father Laurie and son Brady, who was representing the dispersal as the agent.

“I’ve worked pretty hard to get them calving early, they’ve always been spring calvers since I started but I’ve worked pretty hard at feeding them well, looking after them,” Mr Purcell said.

“The season has been great; they’ve been pretty comfortable right through the winter.

“These had a value put on them as accurately as we could two months ago and that was about $1000.

“That didn’t really make sense commercially because kill prices were still around that.

“It’s certainly increased with the rain over the last 10 days or so, I think last week it was growing $100 [per head] a day in the cow and calves.”

Mr Purcell said when he arrived at the sale he was hoping for at least $1500 per head on average, or anything above the offer of the incoming Yarck property owners of $1200 per head, which was turned down.

But he could barely contain his excitement when his first pen went for $2300 per head, as he finished with an average of $2035 for his six pens, more than double their estimated worth two months ago.

“We were way off the money at $1600, Dad and I were looking at each other like ‘are we dreaming?’” he said.

“It’s a massive success; it was well worth the exercise of pre-testing three of our pens on Thursday.”

Wangaratta's focus now turns to the premier feature sales in 2024, with the year kicking off with the Angus weaner and grown steers sale on January 2 and the other breeds weaner and steers sale on January 4.

Mr Murtagh said the usual high numbers of cattle were presented after a quality local season.

“Our feature sales are looking pretty good, the amount of chitter-chatter we’ve had from northern people on how their season is going to pan out has been a big push for it,” he said.

“It’s looking like we’re going to have a very good year with the prices, which potentially can keep rising.”