The Scottish beef price has settled this week at £4.05 to £4.10/kg for an R grade steer.

The official Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) Scottish beef price for an R4L steer is £4.13/kg, which is 4p/kg down.

Same-grade heifers were £4.16/kg, which is down 2p on the week. The young bull price fell 7p to £3.99/kg deadweight.

Finished cows were reported by the AHDB at £3.02/kg for an 0-4, which is up 2p/kg on the week. The liveweight price for cull cows for Scotland is £1.46/kg at the moment, which is down 2p/kg.

Quoybrae Mart in Caithness held a store cattle sale on Monday with 98 cattle. Steers averaged £2.42/kg and heifers averaged £2.35/kg.

United Auctions sold 448 store cattle, with steers averaging £2.41/kg and heifers averaging £2.28/kg. Nine dairy steers were sold for an average of £1.92/kg and 48 young bulls for 228/kg.

Ayr Mart sold 211 store cattle, with steers averaging £2.53/kg and heifers £2.34/kg. The top price at the sale was £1,680 for a Limousin heifer.

Newton Stewart sold 267 store cattle last week, with beef-bred steers averaging £2.44/kg and dairy-bred steers averaging £2.10/kg. Beef heifers averaged £2.30/kg.

Lamb prices

Scottish abattoirs are paying £6.70/kg for new-season lamb. The live trade was £3.30/kg for new-season lamb, up 10p/kg, and £2.30/kg for hoggets.

The number of hoggets sold in Scotland through the ring was 2,900, while the number of new-season lambs was 2,700. This is likely to be the last week hogget numbers are above new-season lamb.

This week, Ayr Mart was selling prime lambs at £3.33/kg, Lanark averaged £3.36/kg, St Boswells £3.41/kg and Stirling Caledonian averaged £3.17/kg.

United Auctions last Thursday sold 701 spring lambs for an average of £3.27/kg, up 4p/kg, and 2,526 prime hoggets to an average of £2.23/kg, which is down 52p/kg.

The AHDB price for across GB for last week was £6.66/kg for an R3L carcase lamb, which is down 2p/kg for nearly 35,000 killed. The same week last year had an official price of £4.91/kg, making a 21kg lamb worth £37/head less.

The Scottish ewe price is £102/head, up £16 on the week for just over 3,300 sold.

Thainstone sold over 1,000 ewes and lambs last week. The average was £73/life, with joint high of £98/life for a Texel-cross hogg with a single lamb and a Suffolk-cross hogg with a single lamb.

Feed barley price rocket

The spot price of feed barley has jumped in recent weeks, with farmers paid £185-£190/t for barley ex farm. This follows a rise in the Nov-21 UK feed wheat futures which was gaining this week at £178.90/t. This followed rising US maize prices as worries about hot, dry weather forecast could stress growing crops.