Meat and Livestock Australia Ripley Atkinson says that the "season is the key driving factor" in yard sale pricing.
"Numbers at a state and national level tighten up this week and that's also a product of softer prices we've seen in the market. So producers are preferring to retain stock in the hope of an improving price in the weeks ahead," Mr Atkinson told Flow News 24.
The eastern seaboard has faced a dryer season and hand feeding "may come a little earlier, but there's also other parts that are well supported with a good body of feed for their sheep and cattle to graze into winter."
Looking at the beef markets this week and the "country processed 119,460 head and that was definitely the highest number since 2020 and it was an increase compared to the same week in 2022 of around 37% or 32,000 heads. So a very strong uptick in volume when you compare the weeks of 2022 to 23, and it's just a continuation of the strong herd rebuild we're seeing across the country, which is delivering those large numbers of finished cattle to market."
Looking at sheep market this week, "slaughter in the March quarter rose 37.5% to 2.4 million head and that mutton production as a result of that was also up 32% which means we're obviously producing a lot more stock and when you look at the mutton numbers process, the mutton numbers offered to the sale yards this year, they're very, very high and they're the highest they've been certainly since early 2020 and into 2019 during the drought. In space, not as significant, only an increase of around 5%, quarter on quarter to 5.7 million head and production only lifted a little bit, but that's because carcass weights have declined."
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