The Cattle Market’s January Joyride

Cows in a field

The final selling week of the month had one less day with the Monday Australia Day public holiday. Value and volume took a dive this week compared to the week prior, with a significant reduction in yardings. When looking at January as a whole, 2025 has made an impressive start.

Yardings for the week fell by 47% week on week, to a total of 50.9k head moving through the saleyards. For the month of January 2025, total cattle yardings was 283.2k head, to hit the same volume looking at the average of the last 5 years, we would need to wait another 3 weeks into late February to match the same volume we have already experienced. What this has caused is a decrease in demand as processors and feedlots have already purchased their requirements in the first 3 weeks.

The drop in demand was compounded by a lower quality of offering when reading saleyard reports. Dalby’s report mentioned “quality-related adjustments” when talking about the movements of multiple classes of cattle. Dubbo’s said it “was a much plainer quality yarding” when compared to the week prior. In the west, Muchea towed the line, mentioning that “quality declined” in both the younger articles and those destined for processing.

The combination of the drop in demand and a slightly lower quality offering wreaked havoc on value. As a result, the indicators across the board dropped, the Eastern State Young Cattle indicator dropped by 6%, the processor cows by 5%, and the largest fall in value for the week was restocker steers which fell by 7%. The indicator which preserved the most amount of value was feeder steers which only fell by 2% compared to last week.

Slaughter for the week prior continued its trajectory and climbed even higher. Working through the elevated levels of supply seen in the yardings. Total slaughter for the week prior was 150k head, compared to the 5-year average for the same week it’s an increase of 50%.

Whilst the values of the indicators this week make for grim reading, they are the result of more timing and surge out of the block at the start of the year. The fundamentals remain strong in the market, with elevated levels of capacity in the market not disappearing overnight. The other source of optimism is for January, from a rain point of view overall has been slightly above average, especially for the east coast of Australia. This has been seen in the weaner sales which saw strong prices and increased demand from northeast operators.

Next week

The market will continue to seek out its balance between supply and demand, with the sharp drop in value for indicators growers may choose to wait a week or two for value to recover, which will support prices as supply tightens. For the week ahead, according to the BOM, there are no significant falls of rain.

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Click on graph to expand

Data sources: MLA, Mecardo, BOM

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We love to hear from you!
Murray grey cattle and calves in green paddock
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