INDICATORS: NYCI trending down, Restocker Lambs up

The National Young Cattle Indicator (NYCI) has tumbled 18.39c/kg this week to be 345.07 on Friday morning.

This is a decline of 3.56 on last year, however it is a 5.14 increase on last month and 1.85 lift from Thursday.

The NYCI is a seven-day rolling average of young cattle sold across all National Livestock Reporting Service (NLRS)-reported saleyards and Australia’s suite of online livestock marketplaces.

A yarding of 4,601 head at Roma Store Sales, recording an average price of 345.76c/kg, accounted for 27.43% of the calculation. Queensland online sales accounted for 3271 head, averaging 363.01c/kg, or 19.5%.

Yearling steers were the largest category included, with 6716 head, averaging 377.41c/kg, or 14.68c/kg back on last week.

Meanwhile, the Eastern States Young Cattle Indicator (EYCI), a seven-day rolling average of young cattle from 23 saleyards across Queensland, NSW and Victoria, was sitting at 641.01 cents per kilogram dressed on Friday morning, back 37.36 on the previous week and 26.40 on last year.

In the sheep markets, the restocker lamb indicator was sitting at 706.71 cents per kilogram dressed on Friday morning, a gain of 7.12 week on week, with the heavy lamb indicator 792.47 cents per kilogram dressed, a decrease of 16.02 week on week.

The Merino lamb indicator was 629.59 cents per kilogram dressed, or 86.86 higher than the same time a year ago, and the mutton indicator was 343.34 cents per kilogram dressed, or 30.78 higher than the same time last year.

The short week resulted in significantly less head yarded across Australia this week, for example the head count used to tally the mutton indicator was 25,116 lower than the previous week.