Drumshanbo Mart hosted its first sheep sale on the Irish Farmers Journal online bidding platform MartBids on Thursday night.

The Drumshanbo area of Co Leitrim is big sheep country and the mart generally has a big sale of sheep on Thursday evenings.

The sale saw a super trade for a variety of sheep, with ewes with lambs at foot at the higher end of prices.

A number of good outfits with twin lambs at foot made over €250 each.

Good-quality store lambs and hoggets in the 30kg to 40kg range averaged over €3.60/kg or around €129/head.

Heavier lambs suitable for killing over 50kg were averaging close to €3/kg.

The export market continues to drive the cull ewe trade, with very good appetite for heavy cull ewes.

Heavy ewes over 80kg were making from €140 to €160/head.

Lighter Scottish Blackface mountain ewes were back at €60 to €80/head.

Mart manager Eoin Kane said: “We were delighted with the trade, with a number of new customers on the night.

“Fat hoggets have been a serious trade all spring, with big demand for the right type of stock. We also have a couple of very good customers looking for ewes with lambs at foot.”

The next sale in Drumshanbo takes place on Friday with three rings in operation for its weekly cattle sale.

The sale will be conducted 100% online on www.martbids.ie.

In pictures

This ram lamb weighed 60kg and sold for €168 (€2.80/kg).

This group of three hogget ewes and three lambs sold for €156

This three-year-old ewe in lamb to a Texel ram sold for €142.

This batch of nine hoggets weighed 37kg and sold for €128 (€3.43/kg).

This batch of 21 horned ram lambs weighed 33kg and sold for €102 (€3.04/kg).