QUEENSLAND auctioneers have just finished their busiest month of the year as a strong market keeps cattle coming into the saleyards.

Numbers of cattle have been building in Qld for most of this year, with the Roma and Dalby saleyards being particularly busy.

Using figures from the National Livestock Reporting Service, StoneX livestock manager Ripley Atkinson said 119,026 head were processed through Qld yards last month – which was 78,456 head above the September average.

Ripley Atkinson

“For most of this year I’ve been mentioning Qld throughput had been running behind,” he said in his weekly email. “The seasonal strength has been a driver of that, but as cattle reach saleable weights and high prices are on offer, volumes have significantly ramped up.”

While September has taken the mantle as the busiest month of the year, the latest figures are more of a reflection on the past two months – as the calendar drew up five Tuesdays for September, meaning Australia’s biggest saleyards at Roma had five sales.

The five sales have likely pushed Roma into its biggest September yarding on record, with 46,377 head going under the hammer, according to Mr Atkinson. The last time there was five Tuesdays in September was 2015, when Roma yarded 37,644 head.

TopX principal Cyril Close

Roma-based TopX principal Cyril Close said he can definitely remember busier periods at the saleyards, however, there was a recent trend towards producers putting cattle in saleyards rather than going direct to market.

“I have always said that money will muster cattle quicker than a helicopter,” Mr Close said.

“We are getting cattle coming here to Roma that don’t normally come here, Dalby is getting it too and we are going back to the good old days of big numbers at Roma.

“A lot of people are sending cattle to Roma and we sort them out to what markets they are going to. That way they can just do one muster and there’s still good money.”

National yardings

In a show of the geographic shifts in cattle numbers, September was only the second biggest cattle saleyard month of the year for the entire country.

During a big sell-down from Southern producers who missed out on autumn rain, the NLRS national yarding figures show there was 337,917 head yarded in May, as opposed to the 333,745 head last month.

Northern saleyards have been building numbers across the year and almost all were above the 10-year average in September.

In Qld, Blackall yarded 13,900 in September which is 3813 above its average and Dalby yarded 26,865, which is 18,957 above its September average. In NSW, Gunnedah yarded 18,710, which 8271 above the 10-year September average and Tamworth was 7737 above the September average at 19,590.