The number of cattle traded through livestock auction marts has followed an upward trend in recent years.

The Department of Agriculture’s AIM Bovine Statistics Report 2017 shows mart throughput rising by 54,692 to exceed 1.8m head, while marts also enjoyed a better clearance rate with the number of animals entered – but not sold – dropping by 20,556 head to 151,349.

The lift in throughput in recent years has stemmed from two main avenues with continued expansion in the dairy herd increasing the sales activity of calves in spring, while the ending of pre-movement brucellosis testing has also opened up the mart as an attractive sales outlet for cows, particularly for farmers with lower negotiating power with factories.

Figure 1 details the sales pattern for 2017 by the month of sale, gender and breed type and it clearly outlines the busiest trading periods for marts.

There is little to separate the peak sales periods in March/April and mid-September to mid-November with throughput underpinned by sales of weanlings and store cattle.

June and July remain quieter periods of trading and it is unlikely that numbers traded over the last two months in 2018 will go anywhere near matching these levels with farmers delaying presenting cattle due to drought.

It is also interesting to note that June and July have been traditionally the two months with the lowest prices paid for cattle.

Farm-to-farm movements

While marts have been successful in attracting a percentage of the higher number of cattle on the ground due to expansion in the dairy herd into the ring, there has been higher growth in farm-to-farm movements in recent years as detailed in Table 2.

Farm-to farm sales increased by 54,847 head in 2017 to reach 1,317,443, while movements have increased by over 200,000 head in the last five years which has closed the gap between mart movements and sales to its lowest level of less than 500,000 head.

It is worth noting that a percentage of movements are likely to be related to contract or feeding arrangements and this is likely to be cancelled out by cattle offered in mart sales but not sold.

Analysing farm-to-farm movement data shows the trade is dominated by movements of dairy-bred cattle and this is reflected in the breed breakdown in movements listed in Table 1.

There were 151,866 dairy-bred males in the zero to six-week age category traded and 97,569 beef-sired male calves and 93,144 beef-sired female calves traded in 2017.

The higher number of beef-sired calves swings the breed-type ratio in favour of beef-sired animals with 764,707 head traded compared with 552,736 dairy-bred animals.

Outside of bull calves, it is not surprising that the remaining dairy movements comprise over 200,000 females aged one year and older.

Continued growth

With the mart auction system providing farmers with a trusted and transparent auction platform, there is potential for marts to continue to grow throughput levels. It would be naive to think that there will not be challenges in achieving this goal, especially in attracting higher numbers of dairy calves and dairy-bred cattle into sales.

With the average herd size growing, farmers have less time to spend in marts while the advent of online sales platforms has also made it attractive for some farmers to veer down this route. Some marts, however, have been proactively increasing the range of services offered to safeguard throughput. This is an important step in light of increasing overhead costs.

There is a total of 90 marts listed as contributing data to the 2017 AIM report. This leaves an average of 20,116 cattle traded in each mart. This figure could be doubled in larger centres with some marts handling a fraction of this figure and facing the ongoing challenge of generating a sufficient margin to cover costs and allow investment in their centres.

Rationalisation is a word that has been talked about over the last two decades but has not materialised, with the number of centres actually increasing as opposed to reducing in recent years.