Weekly cattle and sheep market wrap

Yardings

Cattle yardings have started to pick up at key saleyards. Dalby had an increase of 604 head this week after drier conditions in the area and Roma had an increase of 3,376 head.

Good quality stock was available at the saleyards with buyers continuing to be picky and paying premiums for better finished offerings.

National cattle yardings improved by 7,351 head, especially in Queensland and NSW. Throughput in the feeder steer indicator improved by 36% week-on-week. This has placed pricing pressures on the indicator which reached 384.83¢/kg live weight (lwt).

The Eastern Young Cattle Indicator (EYCI) softened 6¢ week-on-week, with an increase of 5,000 head in throughput. Roma took out the top spot for contributing to the EYCI, overtaking Dalby. Roma also had the second highest prices at 798.68¢/kg carcase weight (cwt) with Casino taking the top price of 832.91¢/kg lwt. The young cattle offering at Casino was larger and of better quality which helped to lift prices and buyers chase premium finishes.

Sheep yardings have softened this week with Wagga Wagga having 6,000 head less at the saleyard on Thursday. Sheep prices in the eastern states have softened, especially in light lambs, which eased 74¢ week-on-week.

The smaller throughput of heavy lambs has helped strengthen prices week-on-week. This was due to the throughput reduction of 4,016 week-on-week. The reduced throughput has helped prices strengthen week-on-week to 802.08¢/kg cwt.  Despite Wagga Wagga having a smaller yarding this week they had an improvement in prices for heavier lambs as required demand for good quality lambs increases. Mutton throughput has increased 5% this week. Comparing week-on-week, the largest contributor to the indicator, Ballarat, improved prices by 93¢ and NSW state prices softened 44¢ with Dubbo, the largest contributor in the state, having eased in prices at 361.04¢/kg cwt.

Slaughter

Cattle slaughter maintained volumes this week at 108,844 head with a slight easing in numbers in Queensland supplemented by a lift of 1% in NSW. These numbers are 15% higher than this time last year.

Sheep slaughter has lifted this week and now sits at 59,000 head, or 52%, above 2022 figures. Increased production in Victoria has pushed sheep slaughter higher as older ewes are turned off. Victoria has increased production by 27% in the past two weeks, however, the public holiday did disrupt production for week five. National lamb slaughter eased slightly but remains above 2022 levels.

Goat slaughter continues to rise, reaching 33,808 head with Victoria picking up production over the past few weeks.

Data update

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released their Q4 2022 data on Thursday 16 February which gives an overview of production and slaughter for the end of 2022 and a sum of totals for the year. A breakdown of these numbers has been written in the ABS 2022 Slaughter and Production performance analysis article, released this week.