Geoff Wright & Ed Marfell sell hoggets to local farmers Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
There's an inviting whiff of toast and bacon in the air and the murmur of farmers eyeing up livestock.
It's Thursday morning at the Coalgate Saleyards in Canterbury, one of the country's oldest.
Hundreds of sheep and cattle are sold here every week but today it's unusually quiet.
The saleyards first opened for business in 1898 and are now owned by Hazlett, which specialises in livestock broking and auctioneering.
The firm's livestock general manager, Ed Marfell, says numbers are a bit lighter than normal because it's been so wet.
"Unless you're really needing to offload stock you're hanging onto them at the moment," he says.
Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
Despite the challenging winter conditions the market is buoyant.
"I think for this time of year to have a lamb schedule over $9.20 a kilo and the beef schedule around $6.20, you know everything's pretty good really."
A lot of the pens in the sheep section are full of (one-year-old) hoggets that have orange marks on their backs.
"We go through with the hoggets until October and then you start to see the first of new season lambs that are born in July and August. They start to come through in November."
Ed Marfell Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
The bacon and toast smells waft out from a small canteen that sits under a makeshift roof beside the sales office.
It's run by volunteers as a fundraiser for the Gentunnel school, according to Jane Wardrop, a retired farmer who has grandchildren at the school.
"It raises several thousand dollars a year and all the food is donated by parents," she says proudly.
Rosie Wardrop & Jane Duncan Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
Philip Shaw manages the saleyards that include an upgraded cattle section.
"It's mainly prime cattle that are in today and a few stores," he says.
To stop the cattle from pugging up the wet ground with their hooves he's been using rotten rock to surface the pens.
"It goes very hard, put in correctly and packed with the plate it goes pretty much like concrete," he says.
"We're trying to make it so it's dry and it's good for the animals, because animal welfare is one of our key drivers."
Phillip Shaw Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
