Assessors selling or buying cattle are no doubt familiar with the widely-accepted industry standard of “Full less 5%” for determining pay weight. The majority of cattle assessors adjust cattle in line with this standard.
The sheep & lamb industry has evolved to where the live weight of sheep (especially lambs) is more a more important consideration in selection and pricing of sale lots.
Whilst AuctionsPlus has an allowed tolerance of +/- 3% for Cattle and +/-5% for Sheep . However, to ensure consistency among offerings and to accurately account for delivery adjustment, we have terms to specify and allow Assessors to calculate the delivery adjustment for their Lot.
The Delivery Adjustment is a comparison from time off feed to a full curfew.
For example, for Heifers, if you operate off a 12 hour curfew prior to trucking, they will lose 1% for the first 4 hours and 0.5% every hour after that. This makes it 7.5%. When you Assessed them and weighed them, they had 5 hours off feed. 5 hours off feed is -3.5% gut shrink loss. That would mean, a delivery adjustment for the Assessment should be -4%.
This will enhance buyer confidence and improve consistency for all vendors on price, regardless of whether stock were weighed full or empty.