TED McNabb gets a fair bit of stick because he is such a picky, negative sort of bloke and whatever Harry does it isn't good enough.

In his day Ted was a good farmer in the sense that he was really good at growing crops, although he was always a bit of a messer when it came to livestock.

But in spite of this the business he ran was very sound because he followed a few simple rules.

One of the most important rules was summed up in his saying, "sell and regret, but sell" and the other was "never walk away from a good deal in search of a perfect one".

What Ted meant by the first rule was that there are times, like this year, when the market is volatile, when you might get a higher price for hanging on to stock, that in the normal course of events you would sell, but that you hang on to anyway. In these cases, the downside of selling and regretting it is better than the downside of holding.

The second of these sayings, "never walk away from a good deal in search of a perfect one" is also pertinent.

Over the past 50-plus years Ted has witnessed situations where he saw neighbours dig their toes in over a few cents, refuse to meet the market, and hang on for months, only to finally accept a lower price.

In a year like this where the price of sheep meat, including lamb, and beef is jumping around and when, although there is abundant feed, the quality of that feed is poor, selling looks like a good idea.

Harry, has stuck to his plan and virtually all lambs were sold before Christmas but for those who are holding, reports of lambs being sold for 520c/kg to and the market easing to around 470-480c/kg, and skin prices of around $16.50 should spur action.

The likelihood that there are still many lambs to hit the market means sell and regret but sell, may be the best choice. The cattle market is coming off the boil, as people reassess the feed in front of them and decide to bail.

With prices above $2.60 per head, weaners are bringing close to $800 net of selling costs selling is good business.

For spring calvers like Harry, there's no real option, but keep cows on good feed and hold the calves until weaning.

The tensions now are, between getting stock off because of the market situation and the feed quality and, the age-old problem of getting paddocks eaten down to around the 1000kg of dry matter-per-hectare by the autumn break.

Also having a plan in place for moving stock to containment areas if the break is late is vital.

The harsh reality is that, following almost 10 continuous years of drought, many people, including Ted, are nervous about rebuilding stock numbers, but if they don't have the optimum stocking rate, feed quality will suffer.