Katanning sheep sales double, Australia sells off 16.3m sheep

Western Australia's Katanning saleyard has doubled its sheep throughput, while national livestock numbers surge across the country. See all the figures.

A Western Australian saleyard has doubled its sheep sales in a year, while Leongatha’s facility has accounted for 273,000 cattle through its gates after Pakenham’s closure.

Meat and Livestock Australia released its national saleyard survey on Wednesday, showing Australia’s growth in livestock sales from 73 cattle facilities and 35 sheep selling centres.

Western Australia absorbed a 60 per cent increase in its sheep sales, while national sheep transactions jumped by 2.3 million stock last financial year, to 16.3 million.

WA’s Katanning Regional Sheep Saleyard doubled its sales with 100 per cent growth to 568,733 sheep in 2024-25. The facility accounted for 52 per cent of that state’s sheep, while Muchea Livestock Centre had a 30 per cent jump to 506,979 sheep.

MLA NLRS operations manager Stephanie Pitt said the WA results were unexpected at first glance, but similar to 2010-2011 throughputs when producers faced drought conditions.

“We had a three-year period when it was drought and we dipped below a one million mark for sheep, it seems we’ve lifted over the one million transactions in WA and that’s not unusual,” she said.

Meanwhile, Victoria sold 4.8 million sheep in 2024-25 with an 8.3 per cent increase.

Ballarat accounted for 34.82 per cent of Victoria’s sheep and faced a 2.9 per cent increase with more than 1.68 million sheep sold; Hamilton had a 3.7 per cent drop with 1.1 million sheep sold; and Bendigo had a 14.5 per cent leap to one million sheep sold.

Ouyen sheep sale. Picture: Chloe Smith.

Warracknabeal’s facility dropped by 16 per cent, but nearby saleyard Ouyen increased by 108 per cent as it sold 280,873 sheep in 2024-25.

For Victoria’s cattle, the Gippsland Regional Livestock Exchange at Sale had a 122 per cent jump in transactions, but accounted for only 2.3 per cent of Victoria’s cattle passing through.

The Victorian Livestock Exchange at Leongatha had the second highest throughput change at 71 per cent after the neighbouring Pakenham facility closed. It hosted the most, at 23.5 per cent of the state’s cattle with 273,202 through last financial year. Pakenham had 100,958 cattle through its facility in the 2023-24 financial year.

The Leongatha facility was closely followed by Echuca (69 per cent, 60,475 cattle) and Yea (63 per cent, 60,500). Mortlake also had a high throughput, with a 32 per cent increase and 224,778 cattle through its gates, following the Camperdown saleyard closure.

Alex Scott and Staff livestock manager Dave Setches said dry conditions also caused the higher throughput, as Leongatha moved to two sales a week rather than fortnightly to accommodate the higher numbers.

“We really haven’t seen a normal season to give us the true impact of Pakenham’s closure on Leongatha,” he said.

“We’ve constantly seen 3000-4000 and above yardings.

“It’s full steam ahead now.”

Ms Pitt believed national throughput numbers would hold, with more cattle to come through NSW and Queensland in the coming months.

NSW had the highest transactions with 1.82 million cattle and 9.24 million sheep, Queensland had 1.35 million cattle sold and 108,260 sheep and South Australia had 237,027 cattle sell, and 963,300 sheep.