The lamb price looks to have cooled, with most abattoirs paying £5/kg or slightly less for R grading lambs.

Prime lambs were making between £2.03/kg and £2.25/kg, which is back at least another 5p/kg on the week. The official Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) price for R3L lambs across the UK is £5.25/kg, down 3p.

UA Stirling sold 9,473 store lambs, where Texels averaged £86/head, up £1; Cheviot Mules £85, up £13; Mules £79, up £3; Suffolks £85, up £2; Beltex £88, up £3; Cheviots £73, up £4; and Blackfaces £64, up £1.

Dingwall sold over 8,000 Cheviot wedder and ewe lambs for an averaged £68/head. They also sold over 3,000 store lambs in Stornoway for an average of £54/head, which was up £7 on the year. Thainstone sold over 1,000 store lambs to an average of £81/head.

Lanark Mart held a Blackface ewe lamb sale of nearly 5,000 sheep, which averaged £107/head, up £2 on the year.

Newton Stewart held a sale of shearling and lamb rams. Texel shearlings averaged £586; Texel lambs £382; Blue Texel lambs £480; Suffolk shearling £400; Suffolk lambs £474; crossbred shearlings £750; crossbred lambs £233; Blueface Leicester shearling £273; Beltex shearling £666; and Dutch spotted shearling £290.

£4.10 beef trade

The price paid for R grading steers in Scottish abattoirs appears stuck at £4.10 and £4.20/kg. The AHDB beef price for an R4L steer is at £4.24/kg, down 2p.

Same-grade heifers were £4.24/kg, which is down 1p on the week. The young bull price is £4.09/kg deadweight, down 4p/kg. Cows grading O-4L were down 8p to £3.14/kg.

Thainstone sold 323 store cattle, with steers averaging £2.23/kg and heifers £2.28/kg. United Auctions sold 994 store cattle, with steers averaging £2.25/kg and heifers £2.22/kg.

Orkney Mart held a sale of 860 store cattle, with steers averaging £2.35/kg and £1,241/head. Heifers averaged £2.34/kg and £1,160/head.

The top price on the day was £1,632 for a Limousin steer weighing 630kg. The top price per kilo was £2.72/kg for a 470kg Charolais steer.

Lanark held a sale of over 600 store cattle, with an average of £2.24/kg for steers and £2.18/kg for heifers. Dairy steers were averaging £1.78/kg.

There were also breeding cattle sold at the sale. Aberdeen Angus-cross cows and Limousin-sired calves were typically making around £2,000 per outfit.

Pregnant Salers-cross cows in-calf to Aberdeen Angus were making £1,700.

Fodder sale

Straw is making between £7 and £9/bale unbaled in the field in the east of Scotland. The auction at Carlisle held their sale this week, with Heston bales of wheat straw going for £85/t and barley straw at £90-£95/t.