About 4000 cattle will be yarded for Friday’s Warrnambool monthly store cattle sale, the highest number in a decade, and 2000 were yarded at Wednesday’s weekly fat sale.

At Hamilton, more than 89,000 lambs were yarded for the first week of its bi-weekly sales as new season lamb supply hit its peak.

Warrnambool Livestock Exchange manger Paul White said farmers were selling off cattle because they were running out of water and cattle prices were high.

“Prices are as good as they have ever been. It’s going gangbusters,” Mr White said.

It’s not such good news for consumers.

David Wiese, of Warrnambool Country Meats, said he had never seen beef prices as high as they currently were during his 23 years as a butcher.

Mr Wiese said he did not begrudge farmers getting good prices but it had forced him to put up his beef and lamb prices. This includes a six per cent increase for scotch fillet.

“We have absorbed as much as we can but eventually had to pass some of it on to the consumer,” he said.

He said the price rise had initially caused some decline in volume sales but turnover had eventually recovered.

Peter Harris, of Lucas Bros butchers in Warrnambool, said the price of a dressed beef carcass had increased in the past year by about 50 per cent, from about $4.20/kg to $6.30/kg.

The big price hike had forced him to lift his prices since the start of the year by between 5-10 per cent.

“Everyone has put them up,” Mr Harris said.

The Eastern Young Cattle Indicator, the benchmark for cattle prices in eastern Australia, was 589.25c/kg/dressed weight on Wednesday, compared with about 340c/kg for the same time last year.

Mr White said November yardings were usually big but this year the numbers were about 1000 head up on last year’s monthly sale.

Many of the store cattle to be sold on Friday for fattening were weaners, which was likely to reduce numbers at January’s weaner sales, Mr White said.

Mr White said he had thought the big yarding of 2700 head for last month’s store sale would have dented numbers for Friday but that had not occurred.

Meat & Livestock Australia is forecasting high beef prices will continue due to strong export demand, tight beef supplies and a weaker Australian dollar.