BROCKLESBY cattle farmer, Simon Ballentine and his sons, were among the crowds at the Wangaratta Livestock Exchange on Friday morning who gathered for the first of two Blue Ribbon sales in two weeks.

Simon said he was optimistic for the prospect of his 183 head of Angus Steers coming in at 393kg, hoping for $4 per kg.

“Across the board we averaged at $1491 per head which was above our expectations,” he said.

Coming from Moogenilla Blood, Simon’s top pen was 66 Angus Steers at 396kg which went for $1595 per head.

As a regular at Blue Ribbon sales, Simon is well acquainted with the fluctuations of the market.

“We’ve been selling here for about five or six years," he said.

“The market has been falling since early January sales; it’s come back a little bit, but I think we’ve got our cattle in good nick so we were hoping for as a good as we could get.

“A lot of these cattle came from Condobolin, in northern NSW, and we had a really good season up there, and we’ve got a little bit more weight in the calves this year because of that.

“We still had a tough season down here with our cattle, but we had enough feed to get through, a lot of sileage and that kept them going.”

Next on the cards for Simon and his sons is preparing their artificial inseminate program for their heifers.

“We have a couple hundred heifers, so we’ll be busy organising that program,” he said.