Buyers from the Mallee to Mount Gambier pushed PPHS's third annual store lamb sale to a $200 high on Thursday at the Naracoorte Regional Livestock Exchange.
The top few pens in the 14,400 head yarding had plenty of weight in them.
JD Cooper, Struan, topped the offering at $200 with his 53 lambs sired by a Poll Dorset out of an East Friesian composite ewe.
The May drops weighed 50kg plus and sold to JBS Australia's Brendon Geary.
Mr Cooper offered his complete drop with the seconds 144 lambs fetching $184, also to JBS.
S&R DiGiorgio & Sons, Lucindale, were the sale's volume sellers with nearly 2800 lambs- which were the third run of their lambs.
Their first pen of 217 second cross, Border Leicester/Merino-Poll Dorset lambs, weighing about 45-46kg made $178 to JBS, but it was 198 late June drop, Merino-Dohne ewe lambs which made the $188 highest price in the DiGiorgio family's draft.
These sold to John Chay & Co, Millicent.
Nanni DiGiorgio was "very pleased" with the prices.
He said their $188 young ewe lambs were surplus to their own first cross ewe lamb replacements.
"The last couple of years the Dorset lambs out of the Merino-Dohnes have been about a kilogram heavier than the other first crosses and when we sell the wool it is a more saleable item, 23-24 microns," he said.
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Batchell Ag, Furner, received $180 for 203 lambs while BT&KM Hutchesson, Maaoupe, enjoyed the same money for 110 lambs.
PPHS Penola's Ashley Braun bought both pens which weighed about 46-47kg liveweight.
PPHS director Robin Steen said the aim of the annual sale was to reduce the numbers of lambs in the weekly Tuesday lamb market during a peak turn off period.
"You put another 6000 or 7000 lambs on each Tuesday before and after (this sale) it just jams everything up," he said.
"It helps us and it helps the other agents as well."
Mr Steen said the rates paid were $8 to $12 a head better than 2020 which he said was a good result considering the store lamb market had softened over the past 10 days.
"The little lambs that were selling extremely well on AuctionsPlus are struggling because people want to buy a 38-40kg lamb because they can shear it and put it straight on feed," he said.
"Whereas before they were buying the little lambs and growing them out."
He said there was still a huge amount of confidence in the lamb industry despite the COVID disruptions in some abattoirs in the past few months and processors booked up.
"We've never seen the money we are getting in October-November in my 55 years in the industry, maybe the new norm is $8/kg (carcaseweight), who knows?"
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