There was a strong trade for freshly calved heifers and cows at Carnew Mart on Thursday, March 13 with a number of bidders eager to get hold of quality stock.

The sale on the day saw a number of freshly calved calved cows and heifers, autumn calved cows and springing cows sold, with all types of cows in strong demand.

Mart manager Eugene Clune said: "There was a smashing bundle of heifers and a fine few cows at the end that were met with a fantastic trade."

A number of high economic breeding index heifers that calved down at 24 months of age in early February took to the ring with prices as follows:

Most of the heifers made close to €2,000 or exceeded that price with all of their dams producing above or close to 500kg of milk solids (MS) last year.

Eugene mentioned that they had a "record-breaking" clearance sale on Tuesday with cows averaging €2,900 with most of the younger cows selling from €3,000 to €3,650.

"To have a sale as good as that on the back of the record-breaking sale was very encouraging for the next couple of weeks," Eugene told Agriland.

A few more sample prices of these heifers were as follows:

There was a number of second, third, and fourth lactation freshly calved cows that came from the same herd which also demanded a high price.

A few sample prices of these cows are as follows:

The mart manager said that "there seems to be an awful lot of appetite for stock which is good and there is a lot of stock coming on the stream" and added that "it seems to be a different client breeding them as the ordinary farmer is not".

Eugene added that "there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of stock available within the general farmer and I'd say the amount of replacements being bred are becoming scarce."

There was another batch of cows that were being sold that mainly consisted of cows with over five lactations and that had calved last autumn, but there was still a decent trade for the older cows.

Sample prices of those cows at Carnew mart were as follows:

A number of late calving cows due to calve down in early April and in-calf to an Aubrac bull were sold on the day with all of the cows vaccinated for rotavirus, salmonella, leptospirosis and IBR.

Eugene said that these late-calving cows were "a fine bundle of cows that made good money".

The prices for these in-calf cows at Carnew mart were as follows:

The mart manager said that there is a lack of autumn cows on the market and that "there is a want for autumn cows".

Eugene emphasised that "there is a huge variation in people available to buy stock now and people are buying the better stock".