Cattle throughput dropped 5% this week, in a short week of trading thanks to the Australia Day long weekend.
Meat and Livestock Australia’s (MLA) Senior Market Information Analyst Erin Lukey said historically public holidays reduced yardings at livestock selling centres but did not impact prices.
She said that the day of the week in which the holiday fell could affect the throughput, with Wednesdays and Thursdays, the days in which most livestock were sold, delivering the most profound effect.
| State Saleyard Throughput - Cattle | NSW | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC | WA | Total |
| W/e: 21st January | 18,886 | 16,758 | 5,093 | 36 | 10,317 | 3,808 | 54,898 |
| W/e: 28th January | 22,805 | 15,069 | 1,943 | 84 | 10,870 | 1,292 | 52,063 |
| % Change on LW | 21% | -10% | -62% | 133% | 5% | -66% | -5% |
Source: https://www.mla.com.au/prices-markets/cattle/national-yardings/
Last year, Australia Day was on a Thursday and that week cattle yardings halved from 40,000 to 22,000 and sheep yardings also dropped significantly from 336,000 to 182,000 head.
Tomorrow’s Australia Day public holiday was not expected to have a large effect, with Friday sales minimal.
This week’s reduced cattle yarding was recorded across most of the country, with NSW defying the trend to record a 21% throughout increase.
Tasmania recorded a 133% throughput increase, with the significance of this distorted due to coming off a low base.
Western Australia and South Australia had the largest drop in throughput, respectively recording -66% and -62%.
“There’s been a pretty big drop in yardings this week, but not necessarily related to the Australia Day public holiday, there has been heap of rain and producers are reacting to that,” Miss Lukey said.
She said producers generally held onto more livestock when it rained, so this was not unexpected.
Miss Lukey said historically throughput numbers return to normalcy the week following a public holiday.
Meanwhile, sheep total physical sale yardings dove almost 40% week on week – even with a lift of 4000 sheep and 9000 lambs at Wagga saleyards Thursday, with a total yarding of 42,000.
NLRS reported that the lamb market showed considerable demand over all categories, despite the impending short trading week.
All the usual processors were present at the sale, not all major export companies were in operation.
A standout of the sale was strong demand for over 5,000 hoggets, with prices topping at $195.
In contrast there was a significant decrease in sheep numbers this week at Hamilton with a total of 6,550 penned being a reduction of some 26,000 sheep on last week’s market.
NLRS reported that the recent rains and a shorter processing week were contributing factors.
Not all processors were present, and some were not fully engaged. Activity was more so with restocker and feeder interest in securing lambs back to the paddock with the Southeast of South Australia, Bendigo and local producers active. The market in the main was stronger overall to be $5 to $8/head higher for the best of the shorn lambs. Lambs back to the paddock gained $20 to $25/head.
| State Saleyard Throughput - Sheep | NSW | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC | WA | Total |
| W/e: 21st January | 199,880 | 2,476 | 34,611 | 3,949 | 151,163 | 14,640 | 406,719 |
| W/e: 28th January | 143,730 | 2,701 | 11,900 | 5,522 | 65,460 | 20,568 | 249,881 |
| % Change on LW | -28% | 9% | -66% | 40% | -57% | 40% | -39% |
Source: https://www.mla.com.au/prices-markets/sheep/national-yardings/
When looking at the state-by-state breakdown, the biggest throughput drop was recorded in South Australia with -66%, closely followed by Victoria on -57%.
Tasmania and Western Australia both increased throughput by 40% and Queensland also had a modest throughput increase of 9%.