Weekly cattle and sheep market wrap

20 Feb 2026

Key points

Heavy rain forced cancellation of key northern sales, impacting yardings.
A reduced sheep and lamb yarding did not elevate sheep indicators.
Both cattle and sheepmeat slaughter remained stable week-on-week.

Widespread rain across northern Australia disrupted key cattle sales this week, driving national yardings sharply lower and lifting most cattle indicators. Sheep and lamb yardings also fell while prices eased, and cattle slaughter declined after last week recorded the second-highest weekly rate in six years.

Cattle market

National cattle yardings fell 17% to 70,538 head, largely due to widespread rain across northern Australia which forced the cancellation of several key markets, including Roma, Blackall, and Charters Towers. Queensland recorded the sharpest week-on-week (WoW) decline, down 60% to 8,094 head, while SA eased 38%. In contrast, NSW yardings rose 6%, and Victoria remained steady WoW.

All cattle market indicators lifted, except the restocker indicators, which softened for both categories: heifers eased 3¢/kg liveweight (lwt) and steers fell 5¢/kg lwt. The decline in the Restocker Yearling Steer Indicator was driven by a sharp fall in Victoria (down 44¢/kg lwt) and a smaller reduction in NSW (down 6¢/kg lwt). By comparison, tighter supply in Queensland supported a dearer restocker market.

The Heavy Steer Indicator increased 8¢ to 442¢/kg lwt. Reduced northern supply also shifted the indicator’s weighting toward southern saleyards, with reports from Victoria noting strong buyer attendance and improved competition, helping to recover some of the losses recorded last week.

Sheep market

National sheep yardings decreased 13% to 79,408 and national lamb yardings also decreased by 22% to 171,723 head. All markets had a reduced lamb supply this week, except for Tamworth which made up made up 2% of the total lamb yarding. The decline in yarding did not translate to higher prices as most sheep indicators fell this week, except for the Merino Lamb Indicator and Mutton Indicator.

The Trade Lamb Indicator dropped 25¢/kg carcase weight (cwt) to 1,083¢/kg cwt. This decline was consistent across all states.

The Heavy Lamb Indicator fell by 33¢/kg cwt to 1,051¢/kg cwt. The Mutton Indicator lifted to 781¢/kg cwt, gaining 18¢/kg cwt.

Slaughter

Week ending 13 February 2026

Cattle slaughter

Cattle slaughter dropped slightly to 154,807 head, a decrease of 3,721 head from last week’s peak of 158,525 head, the second highest throughput since 2019.

State-by-state breakdown year-on-year (YoY):

NSW: down 3.4% to 34,141
Queensland: up 8.5% to 80,608
SA: up 2% to 3,832
Tasmania: up 5% to 5,156
Victoria: up 12.2% to 26,892
WA: up 56.7% to 4,178.

Sheep slaughter

Mutton slaughter remained steady, totalling 167,773 head, a slight increase of 649 head from last week.

Lamb slaughter totalled 454,492 head, an increase of 7,192 head on last week.

State-by-state breakdown of lamb slaughter (YoY):

NSW: down 4.7% to 115,196
Queensland: down 23.6% to 1,181
SA: down 32.3% to 44,392
Tasmania: up 17%% to 11,316
Victoria: down 9.1% to 227,196
WA: up 4.7% to 55,211.

Attribute to: Alex Fry, MLA Market Information Analyst

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